“Writing is a technology”
“Writing is a technology”
“By contrast with natural, oral speech, writing is completely artificial. There is no way to write ‘naturally.’ Oral speech is fully natural to human beings in the sense that every human being in every culture who is not physiologically or psychologically impaired learns to talk. Talk implements conscious life but it wells up into the consciousness out of unconscious depths, though of course with the conscious as well as unconscious co-operation of society…. To say writing is artificial is not to condemn it but to praise it. Like other artificial creations and indeed more than any other, it is utterly invaluable and indeed essential for the realization of fuller, interior, human potentials. Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness…. Writing heightens consciousness. Alienation from a natural milieu can be good for us and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance. This writing provides for consciousness as nothing else does.”
Ong, Orality and Literacy, 81.
