EL 339: WM Ong informal reflection

The first day of class I mentioned that I don't have an affinity for books and reading, but I couldn't put this reading assignment down. I thought it was extremely interesting to read Ong's relation of the oral to written progression to the print to digital progression. Ong writes very clearly and backs up his ideas which proved for a very informative read. I left a comment on Kayla's entry on this topic which read:

I found this reading particularly interesting because of the way Ong relates the topic to the shift from print to digital text. I find the quote (later on in this section of this reading),
"If a book states an untruth, ten thousand printed refutations will do nothing to the printed text: the untruth is there forever" reminds me of Phaedrus particularly because of the discussion we had in class when Dr. Jerz mentioned his PDA is part of his "external memory." Makes us sound like we're becoming computers ourselves. Hah.

Kayla's agenda item relates back to Ong's final paragraph in section III where he says we forget that writing is a technology. I touched on this in my own agenda item. Ong believes text outshines the oral work in it's concreteness-- the written word can endure lifetimes whereas the spoken word can dissipate and waiver over time, from mouth to ear and back again.