Ong - Orality and Literacy Reading (Part 1)

             We all learn to talk at a very young age, and that becomes a necessary function for the humanity, just as important as everything else. Language becomes a natural thing for us and we don’t realize how important that is. Humans are not the only ones that communicate in a way, some animals do the same. The unique thing about us is that we have language that makes our communication much clearer. In my opinion, writing and literacy is a different way to express the language. Being an extension of language does not make literacy a natural thing for us, because we need to memorize it, and practice it. Most of the things we want to learn in our lives are not natural, and we can clearly see that in all classes in school and college. We have the material that we need to learn and no matter how good we are on that class, is never going to be a natural thing. The text talks about music as being something that requires a lot of components that make the final product work, and in my opinion that is exactly how literacy work as well. Just like technologies, they are not natural for us, but we get so used to it, that we start working we them without thinking as much. It is very easy to people to get used to things that help us in a way, and they become almost natural for us.

            “Technologies are artificial, but—paradox again—artificiality is natural to human beings. Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it.” – Page 81.

             

            After all, writing is one of the most powerful things we learn during our lifetime and allows us to put humanity on another level. Although the text does not focus on it, what it made me think about and consider our lives without it, is the “pool of knowledge” some other books talk about. The pool of knowledge is all the information we could pass from one generation to another by leaving scripts. Cultures that live without literacy are not able to transmit all their knowledge, or at least, not in the exact form, to the future generations. Reading the first half of this book really made me consider what is the biggest advantage of literacy and this is definitely the one. Being able to save memories, ideas, events, or even preserve cultures is a huge thing that we would not be able to have if we would not be able to write.