HU520 The Rhetorics of a Print/Digital Culture

Bill Powers' Introductory Notes taken as he spoke, appologies to Bill

Thanks to Tracy Bridgeford for trying to keep up with a sticky keyboard ;-)

November 30, 1998

Ong's argument is important because a society not reliant on print are radically different from societies not based on print documents.

Arguments related to print culture:

Reformation--print encouraged this change as much as anything else--the urge to read.

Churches did not have a Bible in the church--congregations did not read. Priest did the learning and disseminating.

Reformation--each person in the congregation must be empowered, find a way to salvation by themselves--on way to do this is attend church and read the Bible for themselves. This structure didn't exist before print.

American political structure--print traits--the One and the Many--society would be structured to provide for individual rights (characteristics of literature persons--print structure).

All this relates to Ong's, Eisenstein's, Kernan's arguments.

Chartier--The question is not the disappearance of writing but a possible revolution in forms of textuality, that is, the visual nature of print.

(e.g., Vonnegut, who thinks of print as visual.)

Visual Text and the nature of text--reading is characterized by interruption, (one reads, predicts, reflects, then continues).

The visual employs the reading process by making the reader stop with print devices (diagrams, visuals, dashes, capitals, etc.)

Writing and Print are intensly visual. The change isn't one that doesn't see the past as lost but one of change in representation. If we think of the past as written down, but as a visual lanugage, then we can talk about how writing will continue.

There are concepts that exist only in a print culture: spelling, idea of correctness.

Art critics: view: Arthur Danto, 5 well-respected book in contemporary art, also past chair of Philosphy at Columbia; author of book After The End of Art

Dantum: visual qualities of pictures do make a difference

Visual is a construct.

Illustration understood in the context of the words that are there.

Start with visual surface

The way information changes: we also need to talk about how we learn.

Zboray--American Reading public came to acquire an identity through reading and out of reading--fiction out sold any other form of print--including periodicals.

The Paris Review: Interview with Ismail Kadare "The Art of Fiction"

How does one see print as visual? Guttenberg understood print as visual but not much more. Thought he was going to make a picture of a manuscript--that's not accurate at all.

60s & 70s people begin to lose interest in reading; not as necessary to their education and daily lives.