Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Weighing In
Web 2.0, Secondary Orality, and the Gutenberg Parenthesis
3/5/2008
In the large picture of human history, the brief few centuries when print reigned unchallenged as the most revered form of knowledge will be seen as a mere parenthesis. Before Gutenberg, knowledge was formed orally and, now, in this post-Gutenberg era, knowledge is formed -- increasingly -- through "secondary orality" on the Internet (Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New Accents. Ed. Terence Hawkes. (New York: Methuen, 1988).).The sequence is: orality --> literacy --> secondary orality as the primary locus of knowledge authority over the last 500-plus years. Over the thousands of years of human history, those 500 years are a parenthesis.
"Gutenberg Parenthesis" is a term Tom Pettitt, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark, used at an MIT conference on Folk Cultures and Digital Cultures. ("Before the Gutenberg Parenthesis: Elizabethan-American Compatibilties" Tom Pettitt
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/papers/pettitt_plenary_gutenberg.pdf )
What did writers do before the "Parenthesis"? "Sampling & remixing; borrowing & reshaping; appropriating & recontextualizing," in the words of the call for papers for the conference. This is "the way that some university students now think they should write academic essays," Pettitt says. He says this process, in folklore, is called "quilting." But on campuses, educators call it "plagiarism" unless it is properly cited and does not constitute the majority of the text.
Before Gutenberg, humanity mostly shared knowledge through the spoken word, what is called "orality" -- as opposed to "literacy." During the Gutenberg period, just ending, humanity valued printed works as the foundation of knowledge, and tended to believe knowledge is "owned" by an individual. After this "Gutenberg Parenthesis," humanity is beginning to understand once again, with the Internet, that knowledge is communal. The "Parenthesis" was the anomaly, not the Internet. We are not losing knowledge and learning values, we are reclaiming knowledge and learning values.
Web 2.0 can be defined in a number of ways, technically, by uses, by generational shifts, etc., but underlying all of the definitions is the cultural and historical fact that we are now in a period of "secondary orality" (Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy) that brings us back to the norms and processes of communications that humans have always sustained. Print artifacts, though they continue to hold enormous value, will continue to do so, and are not going away, can no longer be seen as the ultimate or even primary way that our world culture expresses received knowledge.
When we talked of "the late age of print" in the 1980s, such talk quickly came to be seen as delusional: Instead of print going away, we were swamped in new computer-generated print material. Only now with Web 2.0 do we get a concrete demonstration of the social structuring of knowledge and the multiple threads that directly or indirectly lead to any single expression of synthesis of those threads.
Trent Batson, Ph.D. has served as an English professor, director of academic computing, and has been an IT leader since the mid-1980s. He is currently Co-Lead for the Web2ePortfolio Initiatve (W2eP), a Senior Associate with the TLT Group, and Editor of Campus Technology's Web 2.0 e-newsletter. batsontr@mit.edu
Cite this Site
copy text (above) for proper citation
Recommended Reading
- Moodle Gets SCORM Improvements, Security Fixes
New versions of Moodle have been released, bringing the most recent stable build to 1.9.3. The latest round of updates includes a number of bug fixes and security enhancements, as well as improvements to the SCORM module.
- Free 'Morro' Antivirus To Replace Microsoft OneCare
Microsoft is rolling out a free antivirus software program for consumers that will compete with products made by Symantec and McAfee. Code-named "Morro," the AV app is expected to be available by the end of 2009.
- Microsoft Demos New SQL Server Features at PASS
Microsoft Wednesday previewed the ability to centrally manage applications and resources in the planned upgrade of SQL Server, code-named "Kilimanjaro."
- Microsoft Unveils Exchange and SharePoint as Services
Microsoft exec Stephen Elop on Monday announced two hosted solutions from Microsoft--Exchange Online and SharePoint Online--which are now available to organizations of all sizes in the United States. The software, paid for by annual subscriptions, is hosted on Microsoft's servers and supported by Microsoft's channel partners.
- 6 Ways Not To Become Rote Using Instructional Technology
There are, in my experience, six strategies to consider with any use of technology that will guard against rote use of technology and facilitate critical analysis of teaching and learning effectiveness. In this article, I'll share with you the checklist I work with and encourage others to work with in learning about and using new technology.
- Bringing Student Web "Stuff" to Campus Enterprise Systems
How can an institution incorporate Web 2.0 learning opportunities for students, and evidence of learning from those opportunities, into existing campus technologies and processes? PlugJam is providing part of the answer.
