Ong Reading

Language is older then writing  I had a basic idea of this from my advance history classes. In Ong's writting we really get into the history of writing and how it works with speech. We follow it to the idea of digitization. Or, apparently, we start at digitization.

I looked up images of the tokens Ong spoke of after reading the piece (which immediately gave me respect for whatever archaeologist was able to spot these things in the sea of dirt and dust they were working in). I then tried to connect these stones with the concept of digitization that I already had. I think of 1's and 0's when I think of digitization. I also think of computer screens, keyboards and electricity when i think of digitization.

This left me rather confused with the idea of these tokens. Especially when Ong pointed out that these tokens only represented an idea in a one to one system. Four tokens did not mean four tokens - it meant one token and one token and one token and one token. I had to read the section from tallying to cardnial numbers till I got the idea down. I'm guessing becasue I have always had cardinal numbers to work with -in fact they tortured me for many years till I entered a humanities major - that it's hard to imagine a world without them. Our world desperately depends on them. However language was created before cardinal numbers. People were living and interacting with each other before those existed and they must have gotten along somehow.

As Ong points out, writing is technology as much as the computer, the OS, the browser and the website I am using to type. It was created by humans to contain speech. Words are objects which can live longer then those that write them down; unlike speech, which is ending as soon as it is spoken. It drew me back to those tokens; how the pieces of rock represented one sheep and one sheep and one sheep before the sheep were brought out and after the sheep were gone.

I feel like there is a lot to discuss in this piece. After reading the blog posts about it I can already tell I haven't wrapped my mind around the linguistic aspects of this reading and I and the concept of 'you' and 'I'. I also think of more questions as I write - how does this effect recorded pieces, do we deal with events or objects when we speak over something like skype, how can I feel that I can adequatly communicate with words when I just read a piece that makes it clear I do not understand the the many complex depths of language? It should lead to interesting discussions.