Digitization Ancient and Modern - Ong

Well. This reading didn't seem to have much relevance for me until the last few pages. I have taken a class here at Tech that spent much of the semester going over Sumerian writing and cuneiform. So the first several pages were review for me. I did like the relation that "microchips are merely a technical improvement on clay tokens". I liked this because it related an ancient method to a current one. Microchips are simply an object that holds data. The old tokens and enveloped were the same thing. They were something that held information.

Ong says we think of digitization today as binary digitization of computers and information processing. This isn't how I think of digital, which was interesting to me. Yes, I think the above is digital, but it's not what I immediately think of. I think of something that uses technology. I think of gadgets that require screens, such as i-products and digital cameras. I also think of something that needs to be hooked up to a computer (through a cable or wifi) in order to share data. With Ong's previous relation of digitization, the rest of his writing made more sense. If you think of digitization as the adding of numbers or the representation concept, then I can see how writing has evolved throughout time from cuneiform.

Again, because of my linguistics class, I found the section where Ong talks about the South Sea Islanders and the process of giving them a written language. They were against having a written language, repeating that it wouldn't work. Ong says, "presumably, they believed that in written languages the spoken language was itself derived from writing". This is fascinating to me because I know it works the other way around. Writing didn't come until well after language, and though writing may have adapted for it's own purposes (such as spelling, silent letters, etc.), the spoken language hasn't been changed much, if at all.

I also found interesting the concept of "events" and "objects". Ong reiterated that sounds and speaking are events, since there is no trace left once the words are spoken, but that written texts are objects  because they are independent of their author and don't require sound to operate. Yes, someone still needs to read them, but the text remains unchanged, and is still there. This was interesting. It made me wonder when paired with current technology, if you record a voice, or someone talking, is it an event, an object, or both? The voice recordings would be on a CD, DVD, sound file, etc., which would be a physical object. However, once you play it, the words still evaporate after being spoken, so it would be an event. When mixed with technology, is it still the same?

Toward the end of the reading, Ong says, "the propensity of tokens to generate cardinal-number counting is striking evidence of their affiliation to digitization in tis common meaning of conversion of data to numerical form or calculation by numerical methods or discrete units.". This is where it all wrapped up for me; where everything became relevant. This was also the first time I got a full sense of what digitization means to Ong. Basically, the ability to use numbers and a counting system paired with a discrete representation system enabled past cultures to become digitalized?