Myles, Marc-Andre, Audrey, Romain, Alex

In the first text, Walter J. Ong talks about the differences between oral cultures and ones that use writing. He believes that there are certain values that are lost when transitioning form an illiterate culture to a literate on. He also refers to the transition from writing to print, and print to the electronic age. He first reviews history and how the importance of oral cultures have been more or less ignored and devaluated, putting too much emphasis on the written text as being constant. However, he notes that oral cultures have an acoustic value which is now resurfacing through the new technological electronic revolution. He analysis the evolution of writing, from pictorial drawings to scripts (memory aids), to the alphabets of different cultures.
We found Ong’s approach very interesting, talking about something we take for granted, such as reading or writing as being something that we put too much faith in and overvalue. He studies the difference between oral language and the written language almost Darwininien in nature, comparing different cultures in order to study the evolution of language(through oral, pictorial, textual, print and electronic examples). His thoughts also partially coincide with McLuhan, in which Oral Language is a form of technology that becomes amputated for language. Both those tools soon are replaced by the electronic age of television and radio.]

In the subsequent texts, Friedrich a. Kittler analyses the new tool of fiber optics, and how it brings us into an age where all visual, auditory and information data can all be more accessible through the new age of electronics. He makes reference to almost every famous author conceivable, weaving his point together through his interpretations of very small quotations. Though entertaining, and well written, it is more of an analysis than the previous text of Ong, which had a lot more of his own thoughts and research, and had a much deeper analysis on a more specific theme.