Free Your Mind and The Rest Will Follow

“Literacy -- or an ensemble of literacies -- will continue to thrive, but in forms and formats we can't yet envision.” (Howard Gardener)

I believe we are shifting from a print based society to a hybrid of print oral and visual culture. With the technology we have today we can effectively do all three and we can usually do it through the same medium. The importance of writing and reading has not been over emphasized; we are still reading and write just in a different form. It’s just that speaking is much more natural than writing. I think the oral culture was always just as strong as the written; it’s just that the written word is a little more respected because learning to read was so hard for so long.. Now that we have learned how to read and write and mastered it we move on to create another medium of expression and communication. It’s the natural progression of human life.

For example, when the Greeks introduced the alphabet around 700 B.C, they opened the flood gates of progression. By creating an alphabet of letters that were similar to the sounds humans created naturally they made the learning of language a little more efficient. “

The Greek system by its superior analysis of sound placed the skill of reading theoretically within the reach of children at the stage where they are still learning the sounds of their oral vocabulary. If acquired in childhood, the skill was convertible into an automatic reflex and thus distributable over a majority of a given population provided it was applied to the spoken vernacular.” (Havelock 38)

Teach people how to read and write while they are still learning how to talk and it becomes second nature.

“The acoustic efficiency of the script had a result which was psychological: once it was learned you did not have to think about it.” (Havelock 39)

Once you don’t have to think about something, you free space in your mind to remember something else or to create something else.

This “freeing of the mind” gives way to innovation, which then leads to progression. Progression isn’t necessarily always a positive thing but it’s something that always moves forward. Once an idea is sparked, spoken and recorded; once it reaches the intended audience there is no going back. To think that this generation will become stupider by the innovation of the internet explosion is to have very little faith in the human spirit.

When the introduction of the written language occurred, it was thought that society was going to lose a lot of its oral culture. This wasn’t necessarily true. In oral culture, the story came from the man, lived in the man, told to the people, died in the man; or was passed on to another man, who more than likely altered the story. Facts and details in oral culture were shaky at best. So in a way the story was bound to change or die eventually. But when written language was introduced humans we were able to record the story will more accuracy. This shift allowed the oral culture to be preserved. Once the culture’s main beliefs, laws and rules were recorded it made life a little less harsh and more civilized. Once the mind isn’t burdened with survival or remembering everything it is free to learn and or create other things.

Now we find ourselves almost coming full circle. In this culture of blogging, and web pages, a human can go to a blog, read the post, hear music or an audio taping or simply watch a video. Three different forms of expression, one medium; the internet. Similar to the first oral culture, the ability to see and hear the storyteller adds a level of community that wasn’t as prevalent in the days before the telephone, radio, TV and internet.

“Like primary orality, secondary orality has generated a strong group sense for listening to spoken words form hearers into a group, a true audience, just as reading written or printed texts turns individuals on themselves.”(Ong 54)

With video websites like YouTube we now are able to hear and see our storytellers as well as share our experiences and thoughts about the story with people around the world instantaneously through the comment button. This new and unique experience is the shifting of a literate cultural to an oral, visual and literate culture.

And this is why I agree with Gardener, we cannot fight progress, all we can do is try to control it or adapt to it. Most of the time we end up adapting and we usually adapt because it’s easier. It’s in our nature to want to be efficient in what we do. Why should we pull out a five pound encyclopedia and search for 15 minutes when we could search Google.com and find the answer in less than three minutes. It just makes sense. Of course when we gain efficiency we lose something. We lose the unnecessary aspect that was making our task harder. The advancements in medicine, science and technology that will come out of our hybrid culture will ultimately outweigh the negativity that comes with any new innovation.

That’s why I get upset when people only see the negative in “video culture”. How can video culture be forced into the narrow box labeled stupidity as if there aren’t any digital media that enrich the mind or influences the soul. As if when the printing press was invented every article and book written was a masterpiece.

“Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.”(Jacoby)

Where do these facts come from? How are they to even be believed? Group studies are largely inaccurate for the simple fact that there is no way to know what “everyone” knows. Ironically, the same mediums that are being blamed for the rise of anti-intellectualism in our culture could possibly be the new way to conduct accurate group studies i.e twitter, facebook, YouTube. Obviously, I am a supporter of video culture, or what I believe to be a hybrid or oral, visual and literate culture. And while there are negative aspects of the video culture that shows America’s unhealthy obsession with celebrities and entertainment, there are also wonderful things being made readily available now thanks to the video culture.

I would even go so far as to say that video culture removes the elitist status of expression over the internet. Before YouTube became popular and the bandwidth of the internet grew, the internet was a place for people who knew how to express themselves through writing and music. Those who could not express themselves through those ways were left in the cold. Those who could only learn something by seeing it also found themselves on the outside looking in. But with the explosion of the video culture we know find ourselves in a day and age where knowledge has become accessible and comprehensible by all.

Havelock, Eric "The Greek Legacy", Communication in History Sixth Edition 2011

Ong,Walter "Orality, Literacy and Modern Media", Communication in History Sixth Edition 2011

Gardener, Howard. 2008. "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading." The Washington Post.com Retrieved October 3, 2010. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502898.html)

Jacoby,Susan. 2008. "The Dumbing of America" The Washington Post.com Retrieved October 3, 2010. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901.html)