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.
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I find it humorous as well. That when the use of papyrus first began, one of the most important and revered jobs one could have to be a writer or scribe. It is also interesting to think that writers and scribes were considered powerful people in the oral society because of the skills of writing for which they had acquired and the often religious and business importance of which they mainly wrote.
Increase of text use in our society today has attributed to the more weaked view of writers. This dilution of the writers power perception is cause from the widespread use of writing throughout our culture. While some might attribute the powerful perception writers to the rarity of skilled writers and literates in a mostly oral cultue I feel societies writing can and still has the same power today eventhough we are living in a world where words are everywhere. For even with TV visual media provided by computers and such writing has moved created powerful stirs in our culture. For example political scandals such as Trent lotts comments written about on a blog that lead to his resignation or the Iraq Study Report that has been heading a media surge covering the issues in iraq. Today writing still has power but the difference is that more people can be directly affected by it.
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