While reading Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy" on the development of writing through speech I noticed many things. One thing I found particularly interesting is the division between spoken word, and written word or text. I hadn't thought much before about the distinction in language, other than their obvious differences. I know from personal experience in classrooms of other wide-eyed students that many hate to publicly speak - not only do their faces show it, but some even admit it while speaking. In the text Ong states that "the impression grew…oral art forms were essentially unskillful and not worth serious study" (10). This I found interesting in that oral delivery and/or speeches seem to be one of the most difficult things to get people to do enthusiastically, and successfully so it seems that it isn't actually so unskilled at all.
Since the change from oral presentation to written texts, many changes have happened as a result.
Another thing I learned and found interesting while eroding was the discovery of oral cultures. I have little previous knowledge of these types of societies and am intrigued by their apparently different means of communication which I can not quite experience ever. I am amazed by the ability their minds acquire for memory compared to a society like our today, where since things are written down and thus available without memory, our capacity for memory is less. One question I found myself asking was, "How long does it take for an oral society, with written text first introduced, to being to lose their mental memorization capacity?" How long after the ancient Greeks 'invented' language did it take for their dependence on strong memories to dissolve to what we have today? This leads to a realization I had that is that emerging technologies, including writings and other 'mediations', build society in one way while also leaving a trail of consequences or reactions as well. Because of writing, our linear society has a smaller memory capacity, but with the ability to write we have built the biggest database in the world - the internet, can fully oral cultures say the same?