Assignment 2

Do you feel that the technologies you use configure you or make you who you are? Why or why not? Don't forget that books, pencils, and words are technologies that we often take for granted. Be sure as well to consider writing and the differences between writing and hearing (literate and oral cultures). How are digitally mediated interactions like a new kind of orality (secondary orality)?

Technology doesn't define us but it is a tool through which we define ourselves. Our technologies reflect who we are. Our music, facebooks or screennames all reflect who we are through the choices of which songs we buy, what colors we use on our background on facebook or myspace and even what we make our screenname to be adds insight to who we are. Those technologies do not mold us but they make it easier for us to live. Technologies such as a pencil or a laptop make things easier within school and help us to learn more things but they do not define us. It is what we learn that defines us and not how we learn it. We can learn a lot without technologies just by having a conversation or seeing something.
Experiences, such as going abroad, define us more than technologies. Going to a place and seeing it and talking to people that live there and have different experiences allow us to grow more as an individual than if we were to take a digital tour of that country or instant message someone that lives there. Merel is proof that going someone allows us more growth than seeing it on television-"Watching a movie about America was completely different than coming here and experiencing it first hand."

Levinson states that when he read a lot of philosopher's text, he thought their theories and what they had written were really amazing but when he met them in person he was really disappointed. Mcluhan was the one of the only exceptions. Clearly how they presented themselves to Levinson and the way they came across was different than what he had interpreted in the text. So hearing the theories from the philosopher was really different than what he had read in the text and was then disappointed by what he was then hearing. Therefore there is a huge difference in the way someone interprets and learns something from reading a text instead of hearing it first hand. Levinson allows discusses how a lot of people misunderstood Mcluhan's idea about "medium [being] the message." It was extremely hard to fully understand what he had written in his text because he died shortly after and all the questions that people may have had could only be answered by interpretation and not going straight to the source.

On page 73 in From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies, Baron discusses Plato's fear of losing memory because of the advancements of writing. This has further developed within the technologies of today. Phonebooks on our cell phones that automatically dial and store numbers allow us to not have to remember numbers. When we were little kids we would be able to remember all the phone numbers of our friends and family but now that they are in our phonebooks we do not need to. There are so many times we all sign into facebook where there is a new group that says "I lost my phone! Send me your numbers." It is a rarity for people to memorize other people's phone numbers because they do not need to. Plato was right when he said that it would decrease our ability to remember things.

Technologies are a different kind of orality because they are a form of communication but most of the time they are read and not spoken. There are several new oral programs that have been developed that can be used on the computer such as Skype which allows people to talk orally to people through a microphone on their computer. Unlike books and newspapers, the Internet is "two way." (Digital Mcluhan 38) Online we have the ability to read and write, when previously we would just have been able to read the articles and words in books and newspapers. The developments that have progressed in technologies are also now allowing us the ability to speak through the Internet as well.