Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966

"The Relation of Technology to Communication." This file contains a transcript of the talk plus discussion notes.

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Main Author: Ong, Walter J.
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Created: Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center 1966
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Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
author_facet Ong, Walter J.
author_sort Ong, Walter J.
title Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
title_short Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
title_full Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
title_fullStr Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
title_full_unstemmed Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966
title_sort folder 8: personal bibliography. texts of various talks, papers, etc., not planned for publication at present, 1966
description "The Relation of Technology to Communication." This file contains a transcript of the talk plus discussion notes.
publisher Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center
publishDate 1966
url http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ong/id/1346
_version_ 1798396422716915712
spelling sluoai_ong-1346 Folder 8: Personal Bibliography. Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present, 1966 Ong, Walter J. Ong, Walter J.; Communication and technology Lectures; Presentations (communicative events); Abstracts (summaries) "The Relation of Technology to Communication." This file contains a transcript of the talk plus discussion notes. 1966 2011 text/PDF 64 1 1 5 8_Item 0001.pdf Series 1: Scholarship, 1926-2001 Items in this folder are from Sub-sub-Series 5: Texts of Various Talks, Papers, Etc., Not Planned for Publication at Present. This sub-sub-series contains texts of various talks, papers, etc., not planned for publication at present. In addition to these, in Father Ong's "General Files" series there are copies of dozens of addresses and/or papers that have never been published, plus notes for still other unpublished addresses, lectures, etc. Many of these were eventually published in one form or another -- many, however, were not. 64 1 1 5 8 Permission to copy or publish must be obtained from the Saint Louis University, Pius XII Memorial Library, Special Collections Department Saint Louis University Libraries Digitization Center text/image Saint Louis University Libraries Special Collections M. 1. T. FACULTY CLUB, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE SEMINAR MARCH 7, 1966 - 6:30 P. M. Present: Prof. Douglas P. ,(dams The Rev. Myron B. Bloy Prof. Michael Brower Mr. Frank C. Colcord, Jr. The Rev. Donald Cutler Prof. Richard M. Douglas Prof. Glen E. Gordon Dr. Harriet L. Hardy Mr. Walter L. Koltun Prof. Alan J. Lazarus Prof. Robert W. Mann Mrs. Perry Miller Prof. Henry M. Paynter and Mrs. Paynter Father Walter J. Ong, S. J. Dr. Edgar L. Piret Prof. Thomas B. Sheridan Prof. Robert E. Stickney Prof. George E. Valley, Jr. Mechanical Engineering Episcopal Chaplain, M. I. T. Management Instructor of Political Science Church Society of College Work Humanities Chemistry Medical Administration Physics Mechanical Engineering Guest Mechanical Engineering Speaker Visiting Professor in Chemical Engineering Mechanical Engineering Mechanical Engineering Physics, Undergraduate Planning SPEAKER: THE REV, WALTER J. ONG, S,J, "THE RELATION OF TECHNOLOGY TO COMMUNICATIONS" (The following represents a digest of a talk delivered before the above group and of the discussion that followed. ) In attempting to discern the spiritual meaning of technological culture, we shall be concerned with the relation of technological culture to the media of communications as we see them developing through the course of history. This discussion comprises two dimensions: first, a presentation of the historical development of communications and second, a presentation of the relationship obtaining between our present culture and the art of communications. In this task, we will be called upon to analyze the effect of man's increasing sophistication in communi-cations in terms of qualitative analysis rather than, as has hitherto been the case, in terms of a quantative analysis. We are concerned not so : much with the accumulation and dif'us sion of knowledge as we are with the accuracy of the knowledge communicated. Further, we are concerned with the effect of evolving stages of communications upon man's conceptual and psychic patterns. -2- The Develop{nent of Communication: There are basically three distinct stages through which communi-cation has become increasingly sophisticated: the oral-aural stage; the chairographic-typographic stage; the electronic stage. Each one of these stages is marked qy the distinct effect communications had upon the men living in these separate eras. The Oral-Aural Stage: The first stage is marked by the awesome power of words. A word is a sound; a source of power; an action. In the Hebrew culture for instance a word was an event, something going on. Words were associated with people and consequently carried with them the same characteristics as people. Words were of a piece with actuality. It was through w.ords that man forged his relationship with the universe about him. Since words had, within themselves, all the volitional qualities of man, this universe had about it a certain air of unpredictability. Consequently, oral-aural man was constantly at pains to bring this universe into some sort of harmony. It is this desire which is represented by the evolving cosmological thought, from early primitive cosmologies full of sound and fury, to the harmony of spheres found in Platonic philosophy. In Plato we can see the movement from oral-aural concepts to visual concepts. The Che.irographic-Typographic Stage: The evolution from primitive picto-graphs to the invention of the alphabet can be seen as the consequence of man's increasing need for keeping records. The invention of the alphabet, itself, presents a remarkable psychological revolution. This may be seen in two aspects: first, there is a remarkable time span required for man to bring himself to the invention of the alphabet--some 500,000 years; second is the realization that though modern man is a multi-lingual creature, all languages can be traced to one single alphabet- -narnely, that carried around the Mediterranean by the Phonecians around 1500 B. C. What could the invention of the alphabet do to sound? In the first place, sound is a time-bound phenomenon since a word is an action. With the invention of the alphabet is seen the potentiality of deactivating words. If we stop a sound we get silence. If sound can represent existence, and silence represents non-existence, then words can be seen to live in a realm on the edge of non-existence. Modern science, when confronted -3- with the necessity of measuring sound, was forced to the analogous process of measuring sound equivalents; hence, the oscillograph and oscilloscope. This tension between time-less and time-bound concepts of words has had a massive effect upon man's psyche. One illustration of this phenomenon can be seen by contrasting the ways in which literate man and illiterate man seek relief from their anxieties. Literate man finds relief in various kinds of schizophrenic withdrawal from reality; but illiterate man is incapable of this type of withdrawal. Illiterate man finds his most immediate relief in unrepressed hostility. He runs amook, or goes bizerk, as witness the Congolese rioters. I would suggest that Achilles' wrath in the Iliad is a carry-over from a pre-literate tradition. With the invention of letter press, alphabetic typography, came an even greater intensification of spacial awareness. Copernican cos-mology, Newtonian physics and the developing sophistication in the making of maps, made an issue of observation. Movable type and the lock press removed words further and further from the action of speaking and brought them more and more into the realm of observation. We know that early in the oral-aural stage words were not considered things. Now, in the typographic stage, words have indeed become things. At this point we may make an important generalization. Vision depersonalizes. Speech personalizes. The truth of this statement may be seen in a simple illustration in any book of etiquette. To stare at a person is considered a major breach of etiquette, and what is a star but a sustained gaze without talking. In staring one treats another -.person as an object. In speaking, one treats another person as a person. Sound relates to the interior dimension of man. Sight relates merely to man's exterior. Any quantitative advance seen in the transition _of the oral-aural stage to the typographical stage in the development of communications must be carefully weighed in terms of the qualitative evaluation of the affect of this development upon interpersonal communication. The Electronic Stage: With the advent of the electronic stage we find voice again coming into its own, yet in a different way. Through telephone, sound tapes and radio we find the sound of the human voice carried through the medium of sub-visual electrons. Further, the advent of rapid transportation and communication has encouraged the direct confrontation of people. In modern technology, we have learned that sight alone does not suffice for the space age. The achievements in sonar developments and in radio-telescopes serve to underscore this belief. In specific academic disciplines -4- we find that in philosophy, logic has given way to dialogue; in theology the form-critical approach to scripture studies has pointed man's search away from the written word and back to the oral tradition under-lying that word. The Relation of Technological Culture to Communication: The conj unction of technological culture and rapid communications has ushered in an age of simultaneity. The contemporary man on the street has a general awareness of what's happening at any given time all over the world. Further, all cultures are present with us simultaneously. History has become compressed into the present. The focus of historicism on the present does something to the human consciousness that is different from what the more antiquarian pursuit of history does. Relating events from history and pre-history demands a sense of the here and now. It relates the exterior structure of the universe to a state of mind. There are those who would argue that our fast-paced culture has pushed the past beyond man's immediate awareness. I would argue to the contrary that technological man's focus on the present keeps him in touch with his past, while, at the same time, giving him the impetus to plan for the future. The increased capability for recovering and storing mass quantities of information as seen in such sophistica-tions as the computer, equips man for his decision-making task in a fashion which would invite the envy of our ancestors. For a man to be truly human he must be free to choose between alternatives. Yet free-dom of choice implies knowledge of consequences of available alternatives. The conjunction of modern communication with modern transportation has provided man with this knowledge, thus freeing him and making him more truly human. Earlier we remarked on two different sets of tension which the development of communications had created in man. For oral-aural man reality was time-bound. For his counterpart in the typographical age, reality was time-Illes. Secondly, oral-aural man, through his dependence upon sound, had an interior orientation; whereas, typographical man, with his emphasis on sight, had an exterior orientation. Tech-nology provides the possible synthesis of these recurring tensions. We recognize in our present age the increase of personal emphasis in philosophy, theology and ethics. We point to the intense interiorization found in contemporary art and poetry. With the recovery of sound we find modern man more and more emphasizing deep personal reflection. This is coupled with man's increasing ability to relate to the "outsider" in society and to social action concerns. This last characteristic seems to be the "Hallmark" of the kind of social revolution of which we are a part. -5- Finally, two contemporary illustrations should serve to demonstrate vivid ways in which modern technology, through new media of communication, has enhanced man's interior due to the recovery of sound. At the time of the assassination of President Kennedy the entire country was brought into a massive personal intimacy previously unknown to man's experience. This personal intimacy was brought about largely by virtue of the "on the spot" TV coverage of all of the complex events happening practically simul-taneously in different parts of the globe. Secondly, the installation of the "hot-line" linking Moscow and the White House provides a classic example of decision making in as highly personalized a way as possible. The "hot-line" reaffirms a recovered emphasis on personal decision in the midst of a culture we erroneously tend to call impersonal and mechanistic. My thesis, then, is that the spiritual meaning of technological culture is found in the realm of communication. Through Technology man has recovered the dimension of sound. With the recovery of sound man has found a new interior orientation as well as an emphasis on his time-bound nature. From these two dimensions have come man's increasing concern with personal and responsible decision making. As man exercises his decision making capabilities he affirms and reaffirms his own humanity. Mr. Bloy: I can think of one example similar to the Kennedy situation and that's Selma. James Reston pointed out that because of mass communications, i. e. T. V. everybody was in-volved in what happened on the bridge when the cops beat up these people. And then because of mass trans-portation a great number of people had the possibility of making a decision about getting involved in this event and ultimately turned out in a number which would not have been possible in another type of society. Prof. Stickney: I am sure technology has been good to us here in this room, in this group, but I wonder about the average layman and his relationship to technological culture. Isn't it possibe that he feels himself to be a pawn in a highly sophisticated society where his religious and cultural standards are threatened and where there are only relative or quasi answers to his problems? -6- Father Ong: There is no doubt that many people in contemporary society are greatly threatened by the culture which surrounds them yet, at the same time, we must bear in mind that man in the past felt himself a pawn. Take the serfs in medieval France, for instance, They had some refuge from their culture in an in-group, but there was a real stark terror in which they lived. I think of St. John Fisher, for instance, an English Bishop who was one of 21 children. He was the only one who grew up. This kind of life breeds a terrible insecurity. The kind of life prevalent in the middle ages, the diseases that were rampant, even among those who were the most well off in their society would absolutely terrify the most impoverished people in our society. I don't deny that there are very real problems today; but at the same time I feel that we do have a tendency to forget about what life was like in the past. We've always had problems. Man will continue to have problems. Did you ever wonder why people in Rennaisance paintings don't smile? It's because they don't have all their teeth in their mouth. Prof. Paynter: Can you give us your comments on those civilizations which maintained a dualism between picto-graphs on the one hand, and alphabetized writings, on the other hand? An example that comes to mind is Japan of today, where they use Chinese ideo-graphs as well as a phonetic alphabet. Father Ong: Yes, that's a good example. Korea would be another one where this sort of thing takes place. I am convinced that Chinese pictograph writing will not survive.. I don't know what the state of the Japanese psyche is. One problem connected with the psychological studies I mentioned earlier is that they f!!;il to take into account this specific distinction between pictograph writing and phonetic writing. Consequently, we don't know what the psychological reaction to learning Chinese pictograph writing would be. We can say, however, that Chinese writing keeps them closer to the oral world, and I think this can be demon-strated. We, in this culture, have a concept of "literal sense." It means "according to the letter of the word. " Now if you ask a Chinese what he means by literal sense, -7- he is norr-plused. He will come up with something like this: "according to the surface of the word, " or "according to the dead letter," This, of course, is highly derrogatory, superficial, frozen, and unsatisfactory to someone who is asking for a literal interp retation. But what is quite obvious is that the Chinese, not having this concept, are clearly much closer to the oral world and are much less slaves to the written word than those who employ an alphabetized system. I am not fully able to evaluate this question. I think it is a very interesting subject, a tremendously interesting subject, and I would like to see some work done on it. I can say, however, from my own experience of meeting and working with people in these cultures, that the Chinese, with one focus, tend to be very conservative, very intro-verted. Whereas the Koreans and the Japanese who have a sort of bifocal approach to life tend to be very extroverted. I had a Korean student and this fellow was hard to hold down because he constantly wanted to take the American mind apart, look at it, play with it, and I think in these broad terms we can, at least, say something about the affect of having two options rather than one. Prof. Brower: I am interested in the different world views associated with these two cultures. You mentioned that the oral world-view was one of harmony and personalistic involve-ment in the universe, whereas the written culture would-view, in which one is able to picture the universe, was the precursor of modern science; it would seem then that we owe the place where we are today to the written view. Yet, you say that now in the electronic age we are, in some sense, re-appropriating an oral outlook. Does this mean that we are in a phase of transition between distinct and separate world views? Father Ong: Yes, I think we are. We are currently much more involved in our universe and consequently have more of a view of harmony. We are concerned about the things that we do and the possible effect that they might have within a universal scope. The discovery of evolution has helped a sense of involvement. There's a kind of paraphenomena at work here. I believe that we are becoming involved in Our Prof. Douglas: Father Ong: Prof. Adams: -8- physical universe because we are moving into the oral. Yet, at the same time, I must say that we are moving into the oral world-view because we are more involved through such things as knowledge of our origins and evolu tion, and this sort of thing. There is something further that could be brought out here, mainly, another distinction between visual and aural perception. Taking this room, for example, my aural perception is simultaneous. I take in ever-ything in the room at once--any sound in the room at any point. Whereas my visual perception is achieved in serial fashion, bit by bit. Now, if through a process of quantification such as a computer we rapidly increase the speed of the serial intake of visual perception, we are approaching, but not achieving, the simultaneity of aural perception. So what I am saying, quite simply, is the more highly sophisticated we become in visual perception, the more we are setting the stage for oral perception. I am interested in the possibility of changes in perception independent of technology. I suggest that there are some chronological lapses in McLuhan's view of all this. For instance, perspective painting came along prior to the printing press. Now in terms of McLuhan's system, we would logically expect that the chronological order of these two events to be reversed. What do you do with a problem like this? I wouldn't hold to a too rigid series of sequences here, since there are so many other factors which play into our findings. But I would hold that since the time of the Greeks we have experienced a greater and greater insistence on vision, at the expense of sound. I say this in spite of the fact that there are many other factors which, as I said, can't completely be measured as to their influence one way or another in affecting this definite movement from an oral to a vision orientation. I am concerned with the gesticular method of communication which you dealt with early on in your talk. It seems to me that primitive man, long before he had the ability to use his oral faculties, was able to communicate through gestures. Father Ong: -9- Gradually he developed the art of communication by means of his tongue, i. e. largely because of its greater convenience. Then we find pictoral records of this primitive form of gesticulation in ancient caves. We might well say that the pictographs in caves are the permanent record of this primitive form of communication. Through the course of history, they evolved separately to the point where modern man found himself faced with, on the one hand, an oral bent which threatened to overwhelm him, and on the other, the surfeit of the written word. Now, today, largely through the means of technology, we find a profusion of all means of speech and for the first time a synthesis is taking place between pictor al communi-cation and verbal communication to a degree of sophistication which can be appalling. TV, for instance, is a continuous pictorial presentation plus the addition of aural sensation carrying with it both the effects, fractionating and unifying. Thus it would seem to me that man's technology has far outstripped his emotional capability of dealing with this present degree of sophistication. As a result we find people suffering from a loss of reality and es pecially in young people. I don't know how to deal with this problem. Perhaps you have some answers. There are several points I should like to speak to in what you have raised. The first is the question of gesture. Gesture, of course, is most closely allied to speech, especially in view of the time factor, but it is not quite as time-bound as speech is. For instance the gesture which is stopped still carries with it some of its significance in the sense of a frozen movement. Yet we can say on the basis of what information we have about early man that there is no evidence of any point where gesture, as symbolic, pre-ceeded verbalization. But undoubtedly it is used by many cultures in conjunction with verbalization to a degre 2 that we don't use it to day. There is no getting around the fact that the whole question of gesture is one which requires more work. Secondly, I would like to say something about the sequence of media. There's a tremendous intermingling here which we don't really understand and we are overwhelmed. The acquisition of one form of communication doesn't supersede a prior form, but rather they tend to reinforce each other. -10- For instance in the step from chairography to typography, everybody had to be able to write. Once we had typography, again everybody had to be able to write. Now in our electronic age, of course, everybody still has to be able to write. And today, the mode of interaction of all these various aspects of communication is fantastic. We have things, for instance, such as a poem of e. e. cummings called the Grasshopper which requires complete use of all forms of communication. So this is our second problem - -the tremendous intermingling and interaction of the various aspects of our communication. Both these two points feed into the third and major point and that's the question of how is the problem of the human being to be handled in view of the massive amount of information he is constantly confronted with. We see evidences of reaction all around us to the tremendous pressures that are being exerted upon the individual. First off, I think we've got to accept the fact that this problem is with us for good. It is not something that we are going to get rid of. Therefore, it seems to me that a basic maneuver has got to be explicit talking about it- -paying attention to it. We have to bring conscious attention to bear on the sub-conscious adjustments which people are being forced to make in terms of depersonalization, in terms of the stresses of technological culture, and this means explicitly talking about involvement and teaching participation. For instance in my graduate courses I constantly try to have term papers which will allow some bit of originality on the part of the students doing the work so that they can contribute something of themselves to the work that they are doing. Now of course the emphasis on participation itself carries with it a considerable amount of stress on the individual. We see this especially in our young people where there are signs of evident regression. Whether we talk of Elvis Presley or the Beattles we see the kids who identify with this sort of reaction implicitly saying and arguing against the fact that they have been forced out of the cradle too soon. The long hair cuts are a reversion to a kind of de-differentiation of the sexes, a de-sexuality which also is an infantile condition, again a protest against being forced out of the cradle too soon. Now it seems to me that Prof. Mann: Father Ong: Prof. Lazarus: Father Ong: -11- the defense against this external pounding upon the individual is always going to have to reside in the interior in a reshaping of the interior. Consequently, we must develop in our general humanistic studies the maxirnurn amount of discriminatory powers. We must develop a critical awareness of this problem in our teaching and in our students. This, of course, is not going to make the problem go away; but it seems to me it presents our only viable method of dealing with it. This is an inquiry regarding the relationship that obtains between world-views and psychotic states. Would I be correct, on the basis of your system, to assume that the congenitally blind should not have the same psychic disarrangement as sighted persons? No. This would not necessarily follow because your psychic pattern is structured by the world around you. So the deaf person, even if he can't speak, if you can get him into the sound world indirectly, will compensate for his disability. Similarly with the blind person, if he can get into the sighted world, indirectly, will pick up his own psychic pattern on the basis of that world. I would like to return to the question of alphabet. We think of developing something new like this, that has such a great potential for power. You can do so many things that you couldn't do before, for instance, with the alphabet. And yet you would say that this tends to inhibit the person. It would seem, on your reading, that though there is some positive benefit from such a development that there is something extremely negative about it. Yes. I think there is something negative, and I think you do have to pay a price for advancement. And, of course, what I am concerned with here, to a large extent, is articulating what the cost is. As I see it, the price we had to pay in achieving the development of the alphabet was the consequent insensitivity to what sound is. This resulted in a depersonalization which comes through loud and clear in the 18th Century view that speech is just a variant of writing. Now behind this view there has been the tremendous influence of the use of Latin for a period of over 1200 years. The Mr. Bloy; -12- amazing thing to realize is that in all this time Latin was used by not one single person who couldn't write it. Latin is not a dead language. The real problem is, that it is a language that is completely chairographically controlled. The whole enterprize of writing a dictionary has grown out of this concept of control by chair ogr aphy. When one writes a dictionary, he is, in effect, atempting to control or capture the language. Johnson, for instance, when he started out trying to write his dictionary, started out trying to control the English language and he learned he couldn't do it, but he still kept trying to do it. Now, presently in our day, we have a very curious phenomenon; namely, Webster III. When Webster's Third came out it won virtually universal acclaim by lexicographers.and scholars. Yet, corresponding to this universal acclaim was an equally massive hostile reaction at the level of the Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Review, and even the daily newspapers--especially the daily newspapers. The explanation seems to be quite simple. Webster III has broken through into the oral world again. For instance they will quote something by Willie Mays. Willie Mays is a literate person, he knows how to write; but writing isn't his trade, it isn't his specialty. This is a tremendous threat to people whose profession is writing. You see they are still bound by this old superstition that you are supposed to talk the way it is written. The implications of this are just fantastic. The depth of our ingrown sensitivity to what sound is makes it impossible for these people to even understand what I am talking about tonight. This seems to me to be both the problem and the hope in such things as Webster III. There are clear indications that we are beginning to resharpen our sensitivity to a sound world and consequently increase our capability for recovery of personality. I am afraid we are going to have to bring this to a close, but it occurred to me while we were discussing that when Marshall McLuhan comes along, he, hopefully, will pick up some of the themes that we have been working on tonight and we can proceed further in this particular kind of discussion. Thank you, very much, Father Ong. http://cdm17321.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/ong/id/1346

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