Response to Goody & Ong

The digital age has brought considerable attention to backup systems designed to preserve stored data in the event of a systems crash or other physical catastrophe that could destroy the very script that has meticulously been saved. Even stepping back just a few decades we discover that a considerable amount of time, money, and valuable space was dedicated to storing written paper files for eventual reference and retrieval. It would appear that a significant number of resources could be conserved if we reverted to the simple memorization methods and mnemonic devices that were employed by ancient oral cultures. Of course it would be absurd to think that schemes such as numerical sets, storing knowledge in stories, or constantly repeating information accumulated from generation to generation would serve a modern and highly complex society. However the idea provides some insight as to how an illiterate person with no reading or writing skills functions in a contemporary and mostly literate world.

Studying the writings of Walter J Ong and Jack Goody from Literacy A Critical Sourcebook directs us to analyze reading, writing, and literacy, and perhaps more importantly illiteracy, from a different perspective. Ong suggest that illiterate people are deviants because they lack literacy, which is considered normal, and the basic mechanical skills of writing (19). To appreciate the functionality of literacy and harbor a compassionate understanding of the world inhabited by illiterate people, it is important to grasp what writing is and how it is perceived by the nescient. Ong argues that literate writers think of words in letters and illiterate people hear only a sequence of sounds and this distresses literates because sound vanishes (20). Literate people prefer to have things written down. Suffice it to say that most of us have been informed that though an oral contract is as binding as a written one, it is crucial to get words in writing because if it was not written down than it was never said. People who live in a solely oral environment have learned how to survive and operate in a world consisting only of sounds and events. However to manage in these surroundings requires an extraordinary amount of energy and mental capacity. In reality it is inconceivable to expect an illiterate person to live a fulfilling life under such circumstances.

Jack Goody suggests that “progressive changes in the writing system increase the number of literates” (32). To further this concept Goody gives us three broad kinds of lists. The first is a simple inventory list for recording events, situations, objects, and people. The second is a shopping list, which serves as a guide for future action, a to-do-list if you will. The third text is a lexical list, which resembles a basic dictionary or simple encyclopedia (33). To emphasize the significance of literacy in our everyday lives I suggest you imagine an illiterate person attempting to manage using only oral skills. I think you will agree that the thought of someone operating in modern society, under these circumstances without any written records of personal transactions or a basic guideline script is incomprehensible. The fact that this scenario does exist in our communities should prompt us to explore avenues that will lead to higher literacy levels and improved reading and writing skills.

The idea of writing as a technology presents an interesting concept that has negative and positive connotations. On the one hand Ong argues that “writing was an intrusion, though an invaluable intrusion, into the early human world, much as computers are today” (21). On the other hand Ong identifies Plato’s condemnation of writing as a comparison to the objections people have against computers, specifically that they are an external alien technology (22). I would yield to Ong’s theory that writing is one of the three technologies of the word and perhaps the most important since it “initiated what printing and electronics only continue” (22).  Printing and electronics are readily acceptable as the principal technologies of the word. However some people have difficulty accepting writing as a technology, but since it uses tools and materials it should be acknowledged as the technology that it is. It is understandable that ancient oral cultures would regard writing to be an artificial device devoid of human involvement similar to the way some view the absence of human contact as characteristic of the digital age. Resistant as we may be to new technology, in the final analysis all cultures come to the realization that they are using the apparatus of that same technology to denounce it.