Postman's "The Judgement of Thamus"

In the chapter "The Judgement of Thamus" from Neil Postman's Techopoly, the author uses the tale of King Thamus found in Plato's Phaedrus to frame his arguments about the effects of technology on people. While he says that Thamus is in error when he finds only fault with the technology of writing, and that he would be remiss if he only considered the negative effects of technology without the positive, the author's tone in this reading reveals that he has a very pessimistic view of the impact technology has on mankind.

One of the main claims that Postman makes in this piece is that technology is not inherently good or bad. Instead, he claims that the impact of technologies depends on how they are used, and that the "uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself" (32). I mostly agree with this claim, because all technologies have limitations that will ultimately influence how they are used, and technologies that offer specific improvements over previous iterations can encourage users to focus on those areas. The clearest example of this for me is with weapons. Weapons are a technology that are designed to hurt people, but whether they are used for defending oneself or attacking another is entirely up to the user. Postman believes that we should strive to understand the potential effects of new technology before embracing them.

Another main theme of Postman's writing is that new technologies subvert old knowledge, often by changing who has access to it. He gives an example of how Gutenberg's invention of the printing press made it possible for families to own their own Bible (as opposed to hearing it at church), and that this made "each Christian his own theologian" (37), meaning they could interpret the Bible in their own way, in ways that could be in opposition to the official interpretation given by the Church. He states that "new technologies compete with old ones—for time, for attention, for money, for prestige, but mostly for dominance of their world-view" (37), and while I do agree that there is conflict inherent in technological advances, I also believe that technologies can give new insights into older ones. Following what Postman has said about technology being a blessing and a burden, we can say that new interpretations of the Bible would introduce critical analysis of it, which is a fundamental human skill.

There are a lot of things that Postman says that I disagree with, though I do so with a bit of reservation, not knowing when this was published. Easily the most disagreeable thing in this piece is his mockery of teachers that support new technologies, calling it "perverse" that they would celebrate something that "may bring a gradual end to [their] careers" (34). According to Postman, teachers are heavily invested in the printed material as the source for learning, and to support anything else is foolish, but I have to challenge this idea. Teachers have been around since long before the invention of writing, and I believe that many teachers will be able to adapt to new technologies and find new ways to use them, so the idea that teachers will lose jobs with the advent of the television and computer seems unrealistic.

Postman also states that while computer technology has benefited large organizations "like the armed forces or airline companies or banks" (34), he also believes that it has been a burden to the masses, claiming that "they are more easily tracked and controlled" and that "they are inundated by junk mail" (34). This is where the piece really shows its age, because the benefits of computer technology to the masses are more than he could have ever imagined, and many of the complains he brings up (such as the one about junk mail) have largely been solved. However, computer technology has made the private information of people easier to access, but that is more the result of harmless negligence on there part.

Sundiata and Ong's "The Psychodynamics of Orality"

Read the Sundiata excerpt handed out in class today. Focus on the transcription of the poem produced by John William Williamson, which retains elements of oral composition. Use Ong's "The Psychodynamics of Orality" to identify features of the text that Ong claims are characteristic of oral composition. How well does the text fit the categories provided by Ong?

The most noticeable feature of the John William Johnson version of Sundiata that identifies it as an oral composition is the heavy use of repetition. This ties into Ong's statements about "thinking memorable thoughts" and the idea that orally composed works are often "heavily rhythmic" with "repetitions . . . and alliterations". There are many examples of repetition, with the mother asking two neighbors for ingredients in nearly identical conversations, and her having a staff crafted for her son twice in very similar ways, who also exhibits extremely repetitious behavior by attempting to rise many times throughout the story.

Another unique aspect of this version of the story is the parts that are written in parentheses. Oral composers lack a way to recall what they have already said, and this results in a dependence on dialogue and communication to sustain thought, according to Ong. These parenthetical asides are the voice of someone who is listening to the narrator and is aiding them in composing or remembering this tale.

The part of the story that best matches Ong's model of oral thought and expression is when the mother beseeches God to give her son the ability to walk. She goes into a long monologue that exhibits the redundancy common in oral compositions, stating that if her son is meant to rule, let him rise, and that if he is not meant to rule, let him not rise, and that if she was faithful to her husband, let him rise, and that if she was not faithful, let him not rise. The monologue is also an example of additive oral style, in that each part builds on the last.

Finally, the story's subject matches what Ong says we should expect from an oral tale. Though it lacks the "enthusiastic description of physical violence [that] often marks oral narrative", the story has historical significance to the descendents of the Manding empire because it is about the founder of that empire. Without writing, important tales such as this one can only be preserved orally.

Response #1: Havelock

Havelock's "The Coming of Literate Communication to Western Culture"


In this essay, Havelock examines the creation of written language in Ancient Greece. He does so by first examining the oral communication that came before literacy and how it shaped the first uses of written communication. Specifically, he states that the first written works were composed orally before being transcribed to writing, and that it took many centuries for the Greek public to become literate. This is the result of a dearth of literature to be read and to practice reading with, and a pervading view that the study of letters should at most support an oral education, rather than replace it.

I enjoyed this reading greatly, in part because it discusses a very significant event in the history of human communication, and in part because of the many controversial statements made by the author. My favorite is at the top of the second page: "Biologically we are all oralists, who have become literate only through cultural conditioning". I somewhat agree with this statement, because Havelock makes a convincing argument that literacy is a very fabricated thing rather than something that comes naturally to people, and that reading and writing are both things that must be taught, rather than things that can be understood through abstract thinking.

While this reading was enjoyable, there were parts of it that I didn't understand, not initially, at least. When Havelock begins discussing the alphabet, and how characters were borrowed from the Phoenicians, he mentions that the systems of writing that already existed had "problems", that "the possible total of syllables in any tongue is too large, and their exhaustive definition too difficult, to be manageable except in some approximate and incomplete fashion". According to Havelock, the Greeks solved this problem by "invent[ing]  the five vowel sounds" and separating them from consonants. It took me a while to understand how this reduced the number of needed characters, but some collaboration made it somewhat clear that rather than having a system of characters that represented syllables, syllables (unique sounds) were created by combining characters, and the "invention" of vowels was what made this possible. Though, after typing this, I'm still not entirely sure I understand, but I'm glad that our writing system has only 26 characters, compared to the hundreds of characters in languages like Japanese.