The third chapter in Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows stood out
to me particularly due to Carr’s discussion of a purely oral culture and the
world after written language. In such a short amount of time, the mediums of
communication in the world converted from discussing orally to a written
culture.
Although we have the fortunate options of communicating with
these two different mediums, I could not help but focus on the advantages and
disadvantages presented if our world solely relied on only one medium.
The pre-literate world was a time wherein communication was
only handled by means of speech. The written language was only for the wealthy
due to their capability to comprehend text. It hit me that since most of the
population could not afford the education that the wealthy had received, a
great percentage of people must have had an impressive memory capacity to
transmit messages from one person to another. “In a purely oral culture, thinking is governed by the capacity of human
memory. Knowledge is what you recall, and what you recall is limited to what
you can hold in your mind” (pg 55), states Carr in the third chapter. This
creates a stronger memory due to the ability of our brains to be accustomed to
the amount of information it has to hold. However, a negative side to this
situation is the fact that not everyone will be able to accurately relay a
message, and the original information gets altered along the way. This, too,
could take up quite a long amount of time since this medium occupies a span of
time to successfully transfer information.
In the post-literate world, however, information is transmitted
more accurately and quickly due to the fortunate medium of written text. Main
ideas of a person’s thoughts may be more easily expressed and with greater
preciseness due to the ease that this medium allows for, thus allowing one to
more effectively inform the reader of what they would like to say. As opposed
to the expansion of one’s memory in the pre-literate world, however, our brains
are in a constantly idle state due to our reliance of the fact that information
may be found where we can locate it whenever we want. This results in the lack
of mental strain exercised by our brains, reducing our memory’s capacity.
Given these bits of information on the pros and cons of the
two different mediums, which world would you live in if you were coerced to
live in a society wherein only one
medium functions: the pre-literate world or the post-literate world?
I would much rather be in the pre-literate world because even though we cant comprehend text we can still talk and we can have a much more greater memory capacity. We would also be able to exercise our minds so much more than the post-literate world. With the post-literate world we really don't have to think about anything, its just there for us so we have less memory capacity as you said. So, I would much rather exercise my mind, and be able to have a large memory capacity. Also we wouldn't be vegetables in the pre-literate world, because we're exercising our brains constantly.
ReplyDeleteTo choose between oral and written communication, I would choose written. When you refer to these types of communication, I think of books versus the oral tradition of telling stories by speech. With written words, you do not have to memorize all that you want to know and share with later generations. Instead, written communication will stay “alive” and in its primary form for later people to read. It serves as a way to share your knowledge with a larger audience than just the people you communicate with orally. With oral communication and the nonexistence of writing, you suffer the likeliness of having stories and languages not surviving. This would prevent history from being documented.
ReplyDeleteWhen the world was post-literate I do find the oral tradition fascinating because you get to improve and put your own creative twists on stories that you hear from others. This would lead to a variety of similar yet different stories. On the other hand, stories have no way to stay in their first true original form.
If I had to choose between living in a post-literate or a pre-literate world, I would much rather live in a pre-literate world. Having a better memory and physically learning things from a book and other written documents, instead of learning it from the television has a big advantage. I believe we live in a post-literate world. Texting, talking on the phone, and communicating on the internet is very popular nowadays. The things we text cannot be saved for other generations to see. In a pre-literate world, the ability to keep a written document for future generations is more likely to happen. It would help us tell our children and others down the line what has happened in history, but if we continue to live in a post-literate world, there will be no history to be save.
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