Our discussions about enhanced ebooks provoked me to think about
the impact of this technology on our culture. It reminded me of some
research I conducted last year in one of my courses. I was looking at
the change that occurred in Greek culture as a result of the shift from
an oral culture to a written culture. Before people began to write,
society revolved around an oral tradition of transmitting information.
When you think of the Iliad and the Odyssey, these classic works came
from an oral tradition of sharing stories by word of mouth. Nothing was
written down. People interacted differently with the information. It
required a great deal of memory and the structure of the information was
shaped by the fact that people could not write things down. As a
result, they formed patterns and created writing structures that helped
people remember. A great shift occurred in ancient Greece when people
developed the technology to write and became a preliterate society.
Walter Ong has written a great deal about this in a great book, Orality and Literacy.
He argues that with the change in the way we began to record and
communicate, there was a shift in consciousness. Ong discusses the
monumental changes in society's thought processes, personality and
social structures.
After reading about the differences
between print and enhanced ebooks, I can't help but make a connection to
the shift from orality to literacy. I find myself wondering if we are
undergoing another great shift in our society right now as we move from
the static world of print to the interactivity of enhanced ebooks and
other great media technologies. I am curious to explore how our own
consciousness and thought processes are altered as we begin to primarily
read texts that are interactive. The texts require a different reader.
The reading experience seems more physical. We are required to move
around in a text - to touch images, consume films, locate ourselves
within the text with GPS, listen to music, select particular sections to
read instead of experiencing the text in a linear way. The writing
process has also transformed. Writers no longer focus on only the text
but also must consider how that text interacts with other elements such
as audio, images, video, ect. This requires the writer to develop skills
and literacies beyond simply writing. Joseph Harris discusses how
writers are working in a "remix culture - an environment in which
texts, images, and recording are constantly recycled and repurposed. Its
a difference between learning how to do things with words and how to do
things with texts." (Harris, A Teaching Subject,
p. 172) The process of reading and writing is again shifting as a
result of new technologies and enhanced ebooks are a part of this great
transformation. I am excited by these changes and I believe, like Ong,
they have a profound impact on our culture.
-Meagan Thornton-
-Meagan Thornton-
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