Memory - Alex Smalley

While listening to presentations during class from segments of the Ong's Orality and Literacy book, one thing jumped out at me, the use of narrative and the oral peoples' memory. As you know, the narrative is a a piece of work that describes fictional or non-fictional events. Oral peoples' ability to use the narrative when cataloging their history or their stories is astounding. Going along the lines of my last blog based on Ong's book, it would be amazing if people still had memories as strong as those of oral cultures. Their use of the narrative is simply amazing, without the oral culture's ability to use a narrative, I believe that we would not have some things in our culture we take for granted. Imagine living one day with the memory needed of an oral person, it would be a very different perspective. Or combining our use of writing today and the capacity of memory from oral people. The creations that could be made, or discoveries to be found about the past, and the potential the future would be amazing.