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Title: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New Accents) by Walter J. Ong ISBN: 0-415-02796-9 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: July, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: One Interesting Concept, 179 Grueling Pages
Comment: According to Ong, who wrote this book in 1981 (pre-WWW), writing is a form of technology that, through the act itself, changes the brain. By change, I mean that it compels one to think of the world in a whole different way. He doesn't so much as say that oral culture is inferior to literal culture, as he does take care to point out how humans are natural to both. It's actually interesting stuff.
I had to read this book for class. Otherwise, it's not light read, so unless you're just a tech-freak, leave the book on the shelf.
Rating: 5
Summary: Writing restructures consciousness
Comment: "Sparsely linear or analytic thought and speech is an artificial creation, structured by the technology of writing."
"Alienation from a natural milieu can be good for us and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance."
A guide to the transition between orality and literacy, the book deepens our understanding of our literary culture.
Readers interested in the ways technologies affect our thought processes should read this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: fascinating, but a slow read.
Comment: "Orality and Literacy" is a scholarly work, which is the author's intent. Because of this, it requires a college level reading ability. With those warnings in mind, it is also a fascinating book on a somewhat remote subject: the way that our ability to write has changed our ways of thinking about ourselves and the world, our ways of remembering, and the progress of human development. It is a good introduction to this academic area as the author surveys the existing research and catalogs his sources very thoroughly. He gives particular attention to how oral cultures deal with thinking, remembering, and relating to the community in fundamentally different ways than literate cultures do. As a teacher, I found myself wondering if we could learn from oral cultures some of the old ways of relating to and remembering what we hear. Our literacy has allowed us to abandon these narrative and remembering techniques; to our impoverishment, I suspect.
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Title: The Muse Learns to Write: Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present by Eric A. Havelock ISBN: 0300043821 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man by Herbert Marshall McLuhan ISBN: 0802060412 Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr Pub. Date: March, 1965 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Cyberethics: Social & Moral Issues in the Computer Age by Robert M. Baird, Reagan Mays Ramsower, Stuart E. Rosenbaum ISBN: 1573927902 Publisher: Prometheus Books Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: Orality and Literacy (New Accents) by Walter J. Ong ISBN: 0415281296 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History by Walter J. Ong ISBN: 0300099738 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: January, 1967 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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