Blog # 3

Oral vs. Written Cultures

Our society today cannot be defined strictly as an oral or a written culture. Many times, the two go hand in hand. While we are a very heavily video-based society, videos do not usually simply pop out of nowhere. All of the hundreds of television shows, movies, documentaries, shorts and news reports (apparently out there in order to make people dumber) had to have a beginning: the script. With the huge, well-known writer’s strike, people had to suffer through terrible dialogue. This, however, made some people realize the importance of the true foundation of a video: the text. Script writers and playwrights spend their lives writing stories, tales, and scripts for other people, the actors, to read, comprehend and memorize. Then, after the actors have done their part of the deal, they convey the ideas of the text in their own manner, as their own defined character, to the normal citizen. Without the text of the script, the actor would not be able to be imaginative, creative, or innovative. Basically, without text, video would have no soul.

Videos have come to define the current culture. Whether it is the new Angelina Jolie movie or a funny YouTube clip, videos influence our conversations, which friends we choose, and what groups we are in. This can plainly be related to how books and novels used to influence past cultures. While some, probably old-fashioned or traditional, may believe that this mass eruption of video translation is condemning our country, others may understand that literacy is in fact changing into a different form.

Howard Gardner, a professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote an article for The Washington Post, entitled “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading,” that explains how “literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” In my perspective, most people are accepting this inevitability with open arms. Our culture has created a unique community that intertwines a combination of written and oral literacy. With a new day and age come different minds that think, process, and invent things differently. With new ways of processing information come different outcomes. It’s not that we’re becoming dumber, per se; it’s that we, as a society, are adjusting to the new wave. Great examples that Gardner uses are his references to historical figures and events: Plato feared that a written culture would diminish the human memory and the first printing press scared religious people who wanted the word of God to be kept sacred. Today, the implication of video is acting as the written culture and the printing press, in this sense. Change is frightening, yet inevitable.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, also wrote an article for The Washington Post. This article, entitled “The Dumbing of America,” however, was on the different side of the spectrum. Jacoby believes that video is making America dumber. We seem to be falling in this realm of what she calls “anti-intellectualism” which has caused our attention spans to sharply decrease. It apparently also leads to an “erosion of knowledge.” What I feel Jacoby is overlooking is that fact that the culture of the 21st Century is much more high-paced than any other. Even though the reading statistics may be low, and people do not know where Iraq is, the culture is still smart in a literary sense; it is just processing different information. Ultimately, a person acquires the same information from watching an accurate history channel documentary as he would if he read a textbook. The decreasing of attention spans is due directly to the thirst of America for a higher quality of entertainment; it takes more than a simple string puppet show to keep our minds on track nowadays.

Back in the time where oral tradition began to diminish and writing began gaining precedence (a perfect era for Jacoby) people did not have PS3’s or Xbox 360’s to keep them occupied. Instead, they had the comfort of another man’s word and the intriguing, unknown, and introductory writing system. Writing in this period was seen as scholarly and extravagant and usually only nobility were able to write. However, the introduction of papyrus, as explained by Harold Innis in Communication in History, explains how writing became more accessible and available. More people began writing. The introduction of Papyrus in turn began the diminishment of writing. While this may seem like a farfetched, paradoxical, and extraneous statement, writing just made everything easier. This leads us to the situation we are experiencing today: convenience is a necessity and we need to get as much done in as little time as possible. Anything that has easy, fast, reliable, efficient, and/or convenient written all over it (figuratively speaking) would earn an A+ in any person’s grade book.

Means of communication have vastly changed over the past decade. Text messaging by phone, instant messaging, checking and writing emails and on facebook by internet are means that have come to dominate today’s culture. Is this really creating a culture enriched with dumbness? These types of video (according to Jacoby, video is “every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones”) are simply just the advancement of literacy. Take facebook, for instance. One can now send video messages to friends and family members that convey more than a simple letter. However, the written aspect has not diminished completely. We can still send and comprehend messages, advertisements, online articles, or any other sort of written language that information can be gathered from quickly and effectively. Our culture heavily relies on both written and oral aspects. While it is dependent on video feeds and television programs, any thing official (law documents, important invitations such as a wedding) is still processed in ink. Even though our reading rate has lowered, and we may seem dumber because we have a less developed vocabulary, we are still a striving culture, dependent on both written and oral aspects.