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Brieya Walker 9/4/2018 WEEK 2 Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word

This week’s blog is a reflection on Walter Ong’s ORALITY AND LITERACY Writing restructures consciousness. In the passage he states, “Secondly, Plato’s Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind.” (page 135) This statement caught my attention because I feel the complete opposite about writing and I think many others do as well. I believe writing something down instills anything I need to learn in into my brain more efficiently than just memorizing what I was verbally told. Writing is me making the conscious decision to write down the information I want my brain to retain. Furthermore, he makes the comparison of parents feeling the same way about calculators. They make the argument that calculators weaken the mind and dismisses it of the work that keeps it strong. I agree with this statement because of my personal experiences. Growing up, in elementary school I learned how to do everything with a pen and paper and had to show my work doing math problems. As I graduated to middle school, calculators took over and having to show full work for these same math problems were not mandatory and all I had to do was use the calculator for my answers. In the long run, this resulted in me not remembering how to manually do the process of long division, fractions, etc., second guessing how to do the same functions of what I was taught. Therefore, I do agree that tools like calculators can weaken the mind, but the process of writing does not.

 

Ong, Walter. ·Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media….. In David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Communication in History: Technology Culture, Society. Third Edition. New York: Longman, 1999, pp. 135.

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Frida Barolli Post for week two 9/6

For this weeks post I am reflecting on Walter Ong “ORALITY AND LITERACY Writing restructures consciousness”. This reading especially stood out to me. “Secondly, Plato’s Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Today, parents and others fear that pocket calculators provide an external resomce for what ought to be the internal resource of memorized multiplication tables.” All my life my parents have always taught me different strategies on studying. They were not allowed to go to school but they were fascinated with education. Although they were only allowed to go up to 8th grade, they are such intelligent people. My parents grew up extremely poor but my grandparents made sure my parents studied. They had no paper, so they studied on napkins. They memorized there history, there math and writing skills on napkins at home. My parents have always told my sisters and I the more you write the better you’ll understand what your studying. I was always a math struggler but when I was little my mom use to sit with me and she would teach me how to do math problems over and over again by writing them down. If you write things down using your own words it’ll stick better in your memory. Writing, in my own experience has been the best strategy to help me with school, work and just life in general. I disagree with Platos statement because writing is very crucial in everyday life, it is the key in life. It may not be everyones favorite thing to do, but it is something that you hold onto for the future. The human brain cannot remember everything. My parents grew up without calculators and they tried to teach my sisters and I how to do math without calculators as well. They can do math in there brain as fast as a calculator.

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Marisa Brincat’s Post for 09/10

“But even with a listener to stimulate and ground your thought, the bits and pieces of your thought cannot be preserved into jotted notes. How could you ever call back to mind what you had so laboriously worked out? The only answer is: Think memorable thoughts.” (Ong, 66)

This quote really stood out to me because it touches on the concept of time. The way that I translated it was that even if you have a person listening to the words coming from your lips, the idea cannot be savored from just some bits and pieces that you may recall. The only way to really remember your ideas is to think memorably and make it something worth while. I thought that this quote was really deep because time is so limited and we all have so many big ideas. Even when we have a lot going on in life, it could be hard to remember all the thoughts and ideas that pass through your mind. In order to make your thoughts ones to remember, you must think memorably. I thought this quote was so beautifully written and it really hit hard due to the fact that we must make all of our important ideas count.

Work Cited:

Ong, Walter. ·Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media….. In David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Communication in History: Technology Culture, Society. Third Edition. New York: Longman, 1999, pp.60-67

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StClair on Mary Carruthers’s Memories Week 2

The work I choose for this week’s response is  The Craft of Thought by Mary Carruthers. In this article, Carruthers is talking about memory and images. There is a specific quote that really stood out to me. Carruthers wrote “Memory images are composed of two elements: a “likeness” (similitudo) that serves as a cognitive cue or token to the “matter” or res being remembered, and intentio or the “inclination” or “attitude” we have to the remembered experience, which helps both to classify and to retrieve it. Thus, memories are all images, and they are all and always emotionally “colored””(Carruthers, 1998). Carruthers is saying that all memories are put into categories based on the emotions or experiences that was associated with that particular memory. When reading that, it reminded me of the movie “Inside Out” by Pixar. In the movie, the main character’s memories were based off situations and the emotions that came with them which made them different colors. For example, her sad memories were blue to represent a sad or disheartening time in her life. Her memories that represent happiness were the color yellow. Although her memories were most color aligned with the emotions in the movie, it still was attached to the emotions she felt from the memories and that experience that happened for them to become memories. That is my takeaway from that quote.

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Milagros’ Reflection for 9/10

While reading Ong’s Orality, Literacy.. this statement really stuck out to me and I connected it to a class discussion we had on Thursday. “First of all, names do give human beings power over what they name, without learning a vast store of names, one is simply powerless to understand.” (Ong,65) This quote resonates with me because as were were talking in class, Professor Karlin discussed how humans make things real and when we put ourselves in these technologies, this is when we make them ours and not artificial. This relates to the quote from Ong and made me think about our discussion because when humans do name something, we have power over the objects that we do name such as a pen, pencil, computer, and even humans at times. Using a pen or pencil and naming it we have power because we power these things to do what we want them to do even if they are inanimate objects. I thought it was interesting when Ong mentioned Adam in the bible and said “Explanations of Adam’s naming of the animal in Genesis 2:20 usually call condescending attention… “(Ong 65) because this is the perfect example to me when a human had power and named the animals from the beginning.  As humans, we could have named things differently because we have the power to do so but its interesting to see how and why names came to be.

 

Works Cited

-Ong, Walter. ·Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media….. In David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Communication in History: Technology Culture, Society. Third Edition. New York: Longman, 1999, pp.60-67.

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Carolyn Pena NYPL Oral History Project 9/9

There were so many different interviews/transcripts to choose from but I decided to choose Barbara Fisher’s interview “Stapleton Speaks: Our neighborhood oral history project” because in her description Richard Spiegel wrote that she was “avid animal lover” and I love anyone that shares a passion for animals as much as I do. This was my first time seeing a transcript as well as editing one. I didn’t realize how time-consuming it is to edit a transcript and the significance that it has. While editing a transcript, you want to make sure it is exactly as what you hear from the audio but that isn’t as easy as it seems. One thing I found difficult when it came to editing the transcript was all the pauses that were made and the “uh’s” that Barbara Fisher’s kept adding when she was stuck telling her story. When you tell a story verbally, there is a lot more said that is in between and during your storytelling. A lot of the in between’s is not in the writing because it wouldn’t make sense to be put in there.  Also, when someone is verbally telling a story, they have to do it right on the spot which means whatever is said has been said but when you are writing a story you’re able to really process what you’re thinking and then write it down when you choose to. The easiest thing about editing the transcript was listening to the audio because I personally love listening to stories especially life stories. Although for some reason the audio for each sentence was not playing, I managed to listen to the original audio and edit the transcript from there. I had to keep pausing the audio and play it back a couple of times to make sure I was translating it correctly.

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Abby Potashnik, Blog Post #2

For this week’s blog post I decided to respond to Diana Taylor’s, “The Archive and The Repertiore”. I chose this reading because her introduction and story life really stood out to me, and I actually will be speaking as a devil’s advocate this time around, to challenge myself. Diana grew up a certain way, continued her education a complete 180 from what she knew and was comfortable with. As she writes her experiences in school, she ends off by saying “I am delighted to report, that for me at least, the training failed miserably”. Referring to her education as the anglican finishing school. I definitely hear that her experiences weren’t pleasant and I probably would say the exact same thing. However, our experiences and where we come from make up for what we have , and I say this an objective eye to Diana’s story. People have all sorts of stories, Skeltons in closets, experiences, lessons, backgrounds, etc, and it’s what we make of it. one could say Diana saying she was delighted for failing, for not abiding to Angelican rule was her experience, her story. Yet on the other hand, once could say she had a terrible experience in the school, yet she came out the way she did because of it, despite it, and there is no need to be “delighted”. I believe it is both. I believe every action that we do, or has been done to us, makes up our story. how we go about handling it, is the key. we all come from various parts of the world. being here in the United States grants us ( or our immigrant ancestors ) various opportunities. We don’t need to fit into a certain mold or label to have our story. It’s our story so we can make do with it, how we would like to.

 

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Jailene Mangome, Week 2

While reading Diana Taylor’s story, I was pulled in by everything she was saying up until she started talking about NYU and expressive behavior. After that I was kind of just lost. But before I got up to this part, I couldn’t help but keep my eye on a certain line. “Identifying with everything rather than nothing may amount to the same thing, but the spirit behind it was far from nihilistic: I overflowed with identifications, white and brown, English- and Spanish-speaking, Anglican and Catholic”(pg. XVI). The reason why this stood out to me is because there are so many people in the world, including myself, that feel this exact way. They don’t really know where they fit in in society because you’re not enough of one thing or maybe too much of the other. We’ve become so used to having titles that we don’t know how to identify ourselves anymore so we just go with everything. There’s never really an in between, only this or that. I feel like it’s very important to embrace where you’re from and if that means that you identify as more than just one thing, than so be it.

Citation:

Taylor, Diana. ​The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas.​ Duke University Press, 2007. pg. XVI

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Anesiya Rivera Week 2

Once the world is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done without the aid of the highest technology available’’

I feel everything he said, was so true. The fact that this was said years ago and applies to how society functions today. We can’t live without our IPad’s or Computers. We don’t go to books to ask question anymore. We run to Siri and Alexa. Ask them how to spell stuff we can’t spell and math problems he struggle to solve. This also has cons not only negatives though. Blind people are able to read with technology, Deaf people can hear with technology, People can  fall in love based off technology.  Technology such a bittersweet thing .

Referance: Quote: Ong, Walter J. “Orality and Literacy” in The Book History Reader. eds. David Finkelstein, Alistair McCleery. Routledge, 2006

 

Jojo, I feel like this is the same article that we read so I just copied and paste Your reference  because I didn’t know the name of the book I thought it was just an article

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Chris Hobbs 9/5, Haraway

A Cyborg Manifesto creates the myth of cyborgs, or cybernetic humanoids, for the purpose of representing many socially divisive problems facing humanity. Haraway brings up a term that struck me as important, a cyborg is “a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction” (Haraway, 1). I believe this to be Haraway’s most important and simple explanation of her ideas that it would take a tremendous effort for humans to have real social awareness of other humans plights. Such plights as the fights against patriarchal and capitalistic traditions which hinder many other humans ability to prosper. The metaphorical ‘Cyborg’ serves Haraway as an all encompassed, socially aware, human. Haraway describes the cyborg as non-gendred, heavily in favor of collectivism and a united political system. As ideal as this cyborg would be, for the betterment of a united prospering human coalition, what would be the cyborg’s emotional  investment in these social probelms? Would this cyborg be beyond human comprehension of what empathy means? As a metaphor, it is unnecessary to explain the reasoning behind it. But if it was translated to humans, wouldn’t the same questions arise?