Reading Assignment 2

I believe that people are essentially afraid of change. Change scares humans because we become accustomed to our current states of being; we grow comfortable with what we use and see every day and understand what dangers exist and how to avoid them. But change throws us for a loop, especially when that change happens in something so inherently tied to our lives as language, in all of its forms. As stated by Ong, writing and all of its offshoots are in fact technologies. These are artificial means, the use of tools, used to create or manipulate our environment into something different. All great technological leaps have been met with fierce backlash by many who fear this change. Plato feared the written word stating that it would make us lazy and inept (a common claim). With the advent of the printing press the abundance of books had people thinking that reading would become an unnecessary leisure and it would no longer be cherished as an important skill. Even the type-writer was criticized. In his old age, Friedrich Nietzche’s eye sight grew so bad that he could no longer write, so he was given a type-writer and learned to type by feel. Nietzche became an opponent of the type-writer, believing that it robbed him of some of his previous flair and wit.

My question is why do we exactly fear these changes in literate technologies? What exactly are these fears that we are so afraid might come true if we embrace newer and better tech? It seems a very prevalent theme that we criticize new technology with the claim that it will make us sluggish, reduce our dependence on our own memory and further distance ourselves from the natural act of creating prose or whatever it is you are in fact writing or marking. I think this question is rather interesting especially after reading some earlier thoughts by Ong. When comparing primary oral cultures and literate cultures there is a definite difference in the way the two think, clearly, but there is also a clear difference in the amount we are able to think about. It is believed that writing allows us to further expand the scope of our learning and philosophizing, thus making us literate types more prone to thinking up different outcomes and events past those of oral cultures. Is it possible that the dangers we so fear from the expansion of writing are only possible to foresee by a literate person or at least a person from such a culture, outside of a primary oral one? Plato feared the effects of writing, obviously the trunk of this great branching tree which has advanced into the computer age. But Plato had to study for years how to write himself before he could write Phaedrus, the work in which he states his fears on the effects of writing. I find it really interesting how many have adopted the technologies they so fear in order truly succeed in finding an audience.