Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought (Reread)
When I reread this the second time I realized that Ong was not talking about how writing negatively affects us and is bad but rather the positives writing has on our lives. Like computers writing has become much more to us., it is essential and invaluable. The following quote found in subsection 4 it better explains why I came to this realization. " Like other artificial creations and indeed more than any other, writing is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials" (Ong, 23). He goes on to explain how technology is an exterior aid but how when it affects the words it becomes interior.
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I like how the second read brought Ong's true message to your attention. I also felt a better understanding of what that message was during the re-read. During the first time through, I was confused because I didn't know what Ong was really trying to get through about the technology of writing. But now I know Ong was drawing to our attention all the positive aspects that writing has on our lives. The quote that you chose to include in your blog really does give me, and hopefully other readers, a clearer view of the real message to Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you both. When I first read this essay I thought the author was some "scholarly old fart" who was getting lost in intellectual discursiveness about how profound and advanced "writing is" (laughing while typing this). I sort of had an aha! moment when we were asked to summarize section one in our own words on Monday. I then discovered that the author was simply trying to uncover the technological processes that are occurring within our minds while we write and speak. This became even more apparent to me when he compared the writing process to learning and playing an instrument.
ReplyDeleteAn instrument is technology because it is not a product of nature, it is a tool. As people begin to sort of play around with this tool they begin to understand how it works and then we internalize the technique and then our production becomes a product of the internal blending taking place. It is hard to articulate but with musicians like Beethoven it is clear to see. Either way the writing process is similar we have internalized the alphabet and grammatical structures and synchronized that technology to form poetry, essays, and even scholarly writings.
One of the most interesting quotes in my second reading was, "By distancing thought, alienating it from its original habitat in sounded words, writing raises consciousness". To me that means writing expands the imagination and allows people to become inspired beyond the natural world and then that inspiration becomes ambitious actions.
I am in the same boat as you on the fact that after reading Ong again and talking a little about the essay and writing as technology in class, I understand it much more than before. I find it kind of facinating how writing used to be looked down upon and found to be "cold" and dead and lazy, just like many feel computers and other technology tend to be now. Now that computers have been around for a while, many people have accepted them into their daily life and probably could not turn back to a time without them, just as we would not be able to turn back to a time without written word.
ReplyDelete"Scholarly old fart?" I love that! And I can see why you would call him that. When reading Ong's article, Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought, mostly in the first section it seems that he uses what Ms. Sandy calls "$25 words" that to me complicated his text. But having the class discussion really allowed me to make sense of the message he was trying to convey and allowed me to see that this introduction really did set up the rest of the article.
ReplyDeleteThen when reading the rest of the article I better understood how Ong introduced Plato's arguments and then refuted them (as we discussed in class) to say that although Plato makes valid points, they can be expelled because although what Plato believes to be true(writing and how it is "bad")there are reasons why writing is "good" as well as other forms of technology such as the computer, internet etc.
I was completely lost in the first page of the article and was going into my, "this is stupid" stage and wanted to quit. This was because many of the words were way over my head. After rereading the essay I also realized that Ong used big words in the first paragraphs to write to his audience the scholoars. Ong presents the points of why writing is "good". I really enjoyed the positive twist he put in his writing because all of Platos points were negative. I am still interested in examining how each part of ongs story connects.
ReplyDeleteAfter dissecting the first section in class, I felt I had a better grasp on Ong's complicated essay. I tried to use the same technique we used in class to decipher what Ong was trying to portray. After prodding through this writing, with some success, I came away with a more positive feel on Ong's analysis of writing as a technology. By taking Plato's negative twist on technology, Ong opens things up by digging deep into the other side of writing, exposing us to both the positive and negative sides of writing; Ong educates us by allowing the reader make the connection and possibly restructuring or thoughts, raising our conscious, good or bad.
ReplyDelete