A little late...

We humans have a hard time seeing what is right in front of us, as well as predicting the future or remembering the past. -Daniel Gilbert

Personally I am fascinated with history, language, memory, technology and everything in-between and outside. I can read for hours, or listen attentively to an interesting lecture, and often feel empowered by such experiences. However, memory becomes a necessary obstacle when it comes to recollecting the thoughts and ideas expressed. Maybe I just need to take some fish oil vitamins, but I doubt that will yield any improvement. This factor of limited memory was the stimulus for the move from oral to written communication. And in my opinion, is the same factor inhibiting my understanding of life during that time.

The late Professor Walter Ong said it nicely, "Fully literate persons can only with great difficulty imagine what a primary oral culture is like..."

The better I can recall information about oral cultures, and simultaneously forget about literacy, the better I can visualize what life was like in such a time.

As for accelerating mechanisms of change, memory was the sole impetus for intellectual thought in oral society. Ong describes how tags and labels were inconceivable in pre-history and how this determined knowledge acquisition and practice. With the exception of conversation, completely aural communication does not allow for very rich information processing; they didn’t have a gig of RAM for number crunching. The medium is the message; an ideal sound is a harmony or rhythm. With orality, the most salient information employs mnemonics. An extremely mundane example of this is the virulence of pop-music and lyrics. Gotta get that new Chamillionair ring-tone:! These things stick. But for them, this was the key to success, the better they could iteratively chunk thoughts into beats, the better chance they had of recalling this information down the road.

I very much like these similarities with our current situation...

The Integrated Web

While reading Everyware, I can't help but imagine what the "Web" will turn into. I think we are seeing a shift from just personal computers to many other important services being accessed through the web. Everywhere I turn I can not help but see a commercial for Vonage, the newest commercial enterprise to use the web to offer service for cheaper. It only costs $24.99 at Vonage for unlimited calling and free long distance. The war of long distance rates is over. The only thing for other companies to do is move to digital phone as well.

Integration can also be seen in TV's. TVs with the Internet were a gimmick about five years ago. They were a computer with only the web. That didn't work. Instead they seamlessly integrated On Demand services on TV. Now you can pick what you want to see at a certain time. The future of this technology is that we will never have to watch anything we don't want. Every show will be on demand. The future of Everyware in terms of screens for watching can not be cut short at just television. Full walls of LCD monitors adjusting to the mood and changing colors with the touch of a button are all a very real possibility. I could see a room in which the light fixtures were non existent, instead bending to the light given off by soothing fixtures displayed across the ceiling.
The future of fully integrated Internet into our everyday lives is a very real possibility in the future.

Speech and Writing

Along with this class I am taking intro to society. I was reading my chapters for the week and I came across a line of text that really caught my attention. It says, "A society that possesses writing can locate itself in time and space." I found that this statement took my mind to a comparison between the people who were the first to discover writing and myself. Whoever discovered it had just started the climb up the technological mountain. They had no idea what this would lead to and I know that they would have never predicted that people would have the power to read about anything they felt like within the click of a few buttons. I feel so lucky to be able to sit behind a computer for at least 3 hours a day and be able to look up and see anything I feel like. We as the society of 2007 have this power to all become knowledgable to any extint we wish. We have computers that hold an infinite knowledge. In comparison to the earlier societies that roamed the world we not only can locate ourself in time and space but we can also learn from the past at a lighting speed that was unknown until the internet was presented to us. We also can get knowledge of what the future holds for us. Amazing.

Word's World

“Perhaps we will find that a world with too much information presents as many problems as one with too little.”
I find this statement by Adam Greenfield very interesting to consider. Will the advent of ubiquitous informatics cause our society to become the antithesis of an oral culture? Or will we become the same, spiraling back to a world reliant on orality or in our case InfoTech, so completely that we come to fear its power.

There is no doubt that InfoTech has provided a great benefit to those who have been fortunate enough to have access to it. Yet unlike a completely oral culture, we have the power of written experience/history that has given us knowledge beyond our spoken thoughts to reason out truths. For this reason alone it seems we are better equipped to battle the problems that may arise. The power of literacy allows us to overcome the same fears a completely oral culture might have of exterior sounds and surroundings because we are more aware of the world around us then they had been. Yet it is not foolish to think we are not similarly affected by the fears of our technology. For example, there are clinically proven fears of cell phone neglect. The, always on phenomenon has lead to the psychological creation of the phantom ring, when someone thinks their phone is ringing when it is not. This example of InfoTech’s power on society might prove that InfoTech’s complete integration into society might lead to internalization of technology to where it becomes so much apart of us, much like our sense of sound.

I also found it intriguing to think of sound as having “no visual reference” as discussed by Walter Ong. That is such a foreign thought to our world of complete visualization of words and images through TV, the Internet, advertisement etc. A visual society filled with signs used on different technologies as well as stone and clay, In a sense we live like the Egyptians. These signs have in part embedded this visual culture to where I truly do not know how to imagine our world differently. It is cool to imagine that speaking in a completely oral culture was in a way like poetry with a rhythmic phrasing to it. There must have been such a great need for memorization of events and happenings. It seems as though a culture completely dependent on orality would have a highly intelligible social life and musical sense. I really do like the idea of a completely oral culture even as I write these thoughts.

A world without literacy in any aspect would fail to spur any technological and social achievements. The mind uses a memory that is unable to do an activity twice in exactly the same way. It is with improvisation and recall ability that one can do certain activities more than one way. This is why basketball players that shoot free throws well will still miss about 3 out of 10 in the long run. Writing is a necessity for the human race to prosper in this world through technology and brain stimulating ideas.

Although technology is already a key component in our society, I do not believe that our world will be such advanced as Greenfield wants us to believe. It is possible that tiny chips will over run pretty much everything in this world, there is something missing, and that is SECURITY and DEPENDABILITY. Computers are strongly limited to what they are programmed to do. Even computers Artificial Intelligence is only some programmer’s written composition in deciphering what the human brain will do next. I do believe that computers will take a huge part of our lives, but the process will be slow. People still do not fully trust the internet yet due to hackers and information fraud. We are dealing with piraters and thieves who eat away at social trust between technological communication, safety, and Entrapanuership.

Paradigm technology: writing

Imagine a world where millions can read, write, and converse in the same language. A world where a citizen of a nation has the means and accessibility to read an exact copy of the laws that govern him or her. For America, Great Britain, and many developed nations the dawning age of ubiquitous literacy has already come, and with another technological revolution on our hands, perhaps it is wise to look to the past for guidance.

I share a lot of skepticism and concern with Adam Greenfield on the topic of “Everyware”, or the idea that every object a human comes in contact with could suddenly start transmitting data. But what paradigm technology has not ushered in feelings of skepticism and concern?

Harold Innis and Walter Ong follow the development of a brand new technology that began to sake the very base of civilizations like Babylonia, ancient Egyptian, and Sumer, writing. Its strange to think of writing as a type of technology, but in actuality it could be one of the best and most practical to date.

Talk about skepticism and concern, writing was not as easily accepted like oral words, why?, its a paradigm technology. The people wanted security in knowing that the words on the clay, where in fact legitimate, so they fire burned their tablets, which would not allow some sneaky thief to manipulate bank records. Papyrus innovation came, and a fiber like, paper medium was developed that would allow more and more to start writing their own thoughts, an insane idea I am sure.

While everware could potentially be the demise of humans, I am sure their were people who thought the same about writing. It seems that great technological innovations always have to come with a grain of salt, but also provide a lot of good for many people.

uncomfortable and unsettling

My opinion of theses 04-06 in the Everyware reading is low at best. I found it really disturbing to think of a very near reality where I'm bombarded by spam as I walk past a Mc Donalds or Blockbuster. I hate the pervasiveness of today's spam, the ubiquitous bulk emails I get number around 50 a day, I don't even want to think about the massive volume of unsolicited crap that'll constantly flow around me assaulting my senses with commercial catch phrases, and clever marketing schemes. It reminds me of really bad science fiction but the really frightening thing for me is this stuff is closer to reality than fiction. I consider my own level of computer savyness to be remedial at best. I still can't figure out the damn email list for this class. Greenfield's musings showed me just how quickly this everyware could progress and the rapid acceleration of IT today assures me that this is merel inevitable. I liken my fear of this background radiation of IT to my grandmother's irrational fear of the cell phone my aunt bought for her. The woman refuses to use it most of the time and has no desire to even learn how to work the phone book option. I'm afraid I feel the same way about the IT advances Greenfield expounds upon in theses 04-06. I can imagine restrooms with streaming ads flying across the mirror or maybe even a stall door or above a urinal. Ads for men's products of all kinds, captivating me as I relieve my bladder

Are We Ready?

Everyday, our lives are slowly being run by technology. Since the development of the computer, they have become more affordable and easily accessible to everyone. Cell phones have become a neccesity for almost every person in a household. Mobile devices have become so advance that you can share the moment with friends by sending videos or photos to each other. The way of watching television has even changed with the development of DVRs. There is no reason to ever miss a show. And if you do (depending on the show), you can download it from online sites such as iTunes. School campuses are filled with students with headphones listening to their MP3 players. The list goes on and on.

The fear is that if we get so used to having all this technology, what will happen when it shuts down and fails? Developers have been finding new ways to create fail-proof solutions so that we can continue these lifestyles without missing beat. But will we know what to do when it isn't fail proof? Many businesses are highly dependant on computers or some sort of technological device. Some more high-tech than others with WAN infrastructures that can give up to date information and others merely using technology to ring up a sale. Would companies still run if a network shuts down? Not really. I have experienced a situation when the email server shut down at work, and no one knew what to do. Everyone came out of their cubicles and began interacting with each other face to face until the server came back up. Those who were unaffected was the manufacturing department who did not need the use of a computer to do their job. You would think that something like email would not have any effect, but it does. Cell phones used to be kept as an emergency tool, but now they are replacing land lines and becoming primary ways of communication. We panic if we don't have our cell phone with us "just in case" something happens. But people were able to deal with emergency situations before cell phones came about.

It is just interesting to see how our afraid we are when we use to not have any of these things at all. After reading Everyware, it just kind of made me think about what would happen if it all went away. I appreciate how much the technology has advanced and happy to be able to be a part of it. I just wonder if one day, it is going to go too far with the plans and developments of integrating technology into simple everyday things.

Pure Orality Today?

After reading both sections in Communication History, I found “Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media” to be more intriguing than the development of papyrus in Ancient Egypt. To imagine how different our civilization today would be if the use of text or any written form of communication were to be nonexistent. The billions of books that would have never been written including the Bible, the Torah or any other religious text, in which billions of people base their entire lives upon, would not exist. Our evolution in technology would be completely different since the use of text is in almost everything.

On the communication perspective, the loss of writing and text would mean an increase verbal communication but an enormous loss in the overall communication. We use text for everything except face-to-face conversation or discussion but even a verbal conversation over a telephone still requires the use of text to dial a number. In this day of technology, we base most of our communication solely on text when we send out emails throughout the office, or send SMS (text messaging) from our cell phones to our friends or family, or have a conversation with someone across the world through IM or even through a videoconference. Text is the core of ALL our communication and technology used today and without it, we would be devolved to a different form of civilization.

Something that did humor me a little from the reading “Media in Ancient Empires” was that when the use of papyrus first began, one of the most important and prestige jobs one could have was to be a writer or scribe.

Musings on Orality and Literacy

My first thought in reading about an oral culture was how easy it must be for those in power to manipulate those they rule over. If what you say is law, then when you are wrong who would know to oppose you? With everything we have today, we hear, read, and see different viewpoint from different countries and conflicts. With an oral culture (in which I always picture a small village with new news coming only from traveling merchants and sings bards), all you know is what those around you know, and most of what you hear is influenced by the one (or group) in power. Imagine North Korea and how the political view is its citizen’s view.

It must not be surprising to hear that for this day in age, it is hard to grasp the complete implication of a completely oral culture. Looking back on it, it seems not too far back in history, yet understanding it is like trying to explain color to one who cannot see. Imagining a life without cheat sheet notes to study for a test, or always having to only “take someone’s word for it” is mind-boggling. We can get only an inkling of understanding when remembering how we learned as children, like ‘the days of the week’ song, or little sayings like ‘Never Eat Sour Watermelons’ to remember the direction of the compass and ‘Every Good Boy Does Fine’ to remember the notes on sheet music.

Still, the long-term memory can only hold so much even with rhymes and songs. To only “know what you can recall” in an oral culture or dominantly illiterate community would be unreasonable if they didn’t have more job specialization (like having an apprentice) or family businesses to make it easier to pass on the knowledge of what they know. Thinking on it, with technology advancing as such a fast speed will generations to come have to memorize less as technology becomes as easily accessible as wearing knowledge (computer screens) on our sleeves?

More information...more problems.

When reading the theses from Everyware I can't help but get excited. I always wonder what technology will be like in 25 years. In my adult lifetime, I can't fathom what my children's children will experience, but what will our generation go through? When we see homevideos of our parents we think they look stupid, or movies from the 70's are so cheesey, not to mention the evolution of video games, health services, communication, transportation.

However, the implicaiton of the title Everyware is what I believe can be the problem. In our walls, clothes, business cards, coasters at a bar, dildos? I enjoy reading these theses out of the excitement of the possibilities, but Adam Greenfield momentarily points out the obvious with such advancements in "Theses 04." With all these new networked technologies, the "web" will be exponentially flooded with more information. With all the information, with all the possibilities, there is exponentially more room for harm. Even now with the "Personal" computer, how much do we dedicate to security already? We have firewalls, spyware programs, anti-virus, registery mechanics, more firewalls, spam-blocker, pop-blocker, website accountablity rankings, email scanners, more and more passwords. Despite the billions who would never dream of flooding another with spam, or spying, or sending a virus...there is another billion who think it's funny, or make it as a business. People who are constantly trying to rip someone off, that's what they feel is the only way for them to survive.

I can't wait for the exciting advancements. Yet how do we draw the line? How do we avoid "Minority Report", "The Island", or a Brave New World? With so much room for harm, we obsess over control.

Problems with oral culture (Jan 29)

I can’t even imagine living in a completely oral culture. I mean, I like the idea of lots of storytelling, but what happens when a story isn’t told enough or isn’t interesting enough at the time and dies out? What if information that could be life changing or provide information about the past is just forgotten? Blown away with the wind? This is a problem already for people studying history. Once they go back far enough, the records of mankind become far more infrequent, with huge gaps. It leaves the question, What did we miss out on?

A culture without writing to document itself is a culture doomed to be continuously perched on the brink of death. By this, I mean that if all information is communicated orally, then the people of this culture are the only way it exists. If all the people suddenly die out, by whatever disaster chances to fall upon them, the culture is lost, because all the knowledge is oral. Of course the chances of an entire culture dying out at once are unlikely, but it is possible.

The point is that without documentation, knowledge is very easily lost. Stories can be retold, but not exactly. A perfect example is the story of a man who, upon arriving back from a fishing trip, tells his wife about his adventures, who tells her friend, who also tells a friend, etc. By the end of it, the man went from catching a two pound bass to a two ton whale. You get the idea. All stories change in the telling. Even with mnemonics and formulas, oral knowledge is very temporary, due to the capacity of the human memory, while documentation is much more permanent and likely to stand up to the test of time.

Welcome to the blog!

This will be the site of our continuing online discussion of the readings for the course, since we will not have enough time in class to discuss them as fully as we might like, and you would probably like to have tangible evidence of your reading activity for your Learning Records.

Posts will be due by noon each Monday we meet in class (including the Monday after spring break). Posts should be around 250 words, +/- 50--something substantive, more so than observations of activity are.  You will offer two different responses to these posts by noon on Wednesday of each week, of approximately 150 words, +/- 50.  Timeliness is paramount, as is topicality (they do have to have something to do with the readings for the given week).

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