Morgan Arnold (Class Reading Blog) Orality and Literacy

I just asked a few friends what they thought of when the word technology is said. Their responses included some of the following: the computer, Internet, the Droid, I-phone, I-pad, and I-pod. When I explained that writing, yes simple text is a technology, they literally laughed out loud. However, Ong explains how Plato really made the way for writing as a technology (p. 80-81). How can this be? Well before Plato, writing was not an intricate part of every day lives. However, it did require tools: such as ink and paper. Thus, this made it a technology. Ong brings up this great point about writing, which I think is applicable to modern day technologies, “by contrast with oral speech, writing is completely artificial. There is no way to write ‘naturally.’ Oral speech is fully natural to human beings in the sense that every human being in every culture who is not physiologically or psychological impaired learn to talk” (p. 81). Speech is one of the few things that every human has in common. We do not NEED technologies like the internet or latest cell phone like we need speech.