"Writing establishes what has been called 'context-free' language or
'autonomous discourse', discourse which cannot be directly questioned or
contested as oral speech can be because written discourse has been detached
from its author.
"Oral cultures know a kind of autonomous discourse in fixed ritual
formulas, as well as in vatic sayings or prophesies, for which the utterer
himself or herself is considered only the channel, not the source. The Delphic
oracle was not responsible for they were held to be the voice of the god.
Writing, and even more print, has some of this vatic quality. Like the oracle
or the prophet, the book relays an utterance from a source, the one who really
'said' or wrote the book. The author cannot might be challenged if only he or
she could be reached, but the author cannot be reached in any book. There is
no way directly to refute a text. After absolutely total and devastating
refutation, it says exactly the same thing as before. This is one reason why
'the book says' is popularly tantamount to 'it is true'. It is also one reason
why books have been burnt. A text stating what the whole world knows is false
will state falsehood forever, so long as the text exists. Texts are inherently
contumacious."
Marsha:
The author presents Plato's view:
PLATO, WRITING AND COMPUTERS
"Most persons are surprised, and many distressed, to learn that
essentially the same objections commonly urged today against computers were
urged by Plato in _Phædrus_ and in the _Seventh Letter_ against writing.
Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the _Phædrus_, is inhuman, pretending to
establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a
thing, a manufactured product. The same of course is said of computers.
Secondly, Plato's Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use
writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they
lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Thirdly, a written text
is basically unresponsive ... Fourthly, ..."
"One weakness in Plato's position was that, to make his objections
effective, he put them into writing, ..."
"In fact, as Havelock has beautifully shown, Plato's entire epistemology
was unwittingly a programmed rejection of the old oral, mobile, warm,
personally interactive lifeworld of oral culture..."
(Ong, Walter J., 'Orality and Literacy', pp. 77-78)
Marsha:
The ideas presented in this book adds new light to the split between the social
and intellectual levels.
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