New Problems
Orality imitating Literacy
Literacy imitating Orality
Notes:
Literacy finally succeeded orality as the authoritative means of information exchange, but probably not until the eighteenth century. That succession brings problems of its own, even to this day. It is one of the unfortunate possibilities of any conference that someone will treat orality as though it were literacy, that is, they will read a paper with the same color, modulation, inflection, and language music as print. In other words, none at all. It would be possible, of course, for print to emulate the spoken word with colored inks and various fonts. Indeed, with the new possibilities opened by graphical computing, multiple fonts become one of the great temptations. And the results can be what is known as “Ransom Note.”