Notes 1/25/2005

Important Dates
*February 22- Quiz #1
*March 1- Top 100 Memorization Due
*March 7- Salman Rushdie's speech 7:30 SUB ballrooms (get tickets now!)
*March 31- Quiz #2
*April 11 & 15- Group Presentations of Kane material
*April 21, 26, & 28- Individual term paper presentations and papers due
*May 1-Day for EJournal to be completed
*May3 12:00-1:50- Final Exam
See syllabus for more specifics. :O)

Kane supports the purity of the oral culture. Ong has a more balanced view of both orality and literacy and points out the advantages and disadvantages in both. However, while Kane leans toward orality, Ong leans toward literacy.

W.H. Auden "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" Without writing, abstract thought and the shared technology and consciousness would not exist because the act of writing imposes structure and order on an incoherent jumble of what goes on in our heads.

Orality to literacy is an evolutionary necessity. Development of all disciplines needs writing. We take writing and reading for granted.

In a culture in which literature abounds, the rule of the law is written. The signature is all powerful while the spoken word is disregarded.

Marshal McCluin argues that "the medium is the message", meaning, that the way that one gets information will determine the meaning of the message. If I read Ong's text I will take a different meaning from it than if Ong were to read it to me or if I were to watch it on television.

An "apothogm" is a wise saying.

Wallace Stevens "A change of style is a change of subject."

Freidrich Schuller "The only thing worth having is accidents. Only in mistakes is there truth."

Ong argues that language itself is a technology. That it evolves and every step is inevitable and to be celebrated.

Memory of the soul--> Plato says that we all suffer from amnesia and we have forgotten that which we knew before we were born. We are not really "learning" in school, we are remembering that which we have forgotten and as we remember more and more, our wings from our angel days begin to come back.