home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
- Path: sparky!uunet!news.gtech.com!noc.near.net!mars.caps.maine.edu!maine.maine.edu!cunyvm!psuvm!auvm!idui1!localuser
- References: <MBU-L%92110408101682@TTUVM1.BITNET>
- Message-ID: <92309.122338ENGLAB@IDUI1.BITNET>
- Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 12:23:38 PST
- Sender: "Megabyte University (Computers & Writing)" <MBU-L@TTUVM1.BITNET>
- Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was NETNEWS@IDUI1
- From: Gordon Thomas <ENGLAB@IDUI1.BITNET>
- Subject: Re: synch/asynch
- Lines: 28
-
- Slatin (the younger) writes:
-
- >Are we assisting at the end of the
- >traditional academic essay? Damn right we are, though there's no cause for
- >celebration there (the traditional academic essay is capable of real power),
- >any more than there's cause for alarm that the demise will be sudden or that
- >the form will disappear anytime soon. The print-oriented essay will be around
- >for a long time to come, side by side with hypertexts and electronic
- >conferences, synchronous and asynchronous.
-
- I agree completely. This reminds me of Walter Ong's essay "The Spoken Book"
- in which he considers the effects of media transformation. One of the points
- he makes in passing is that musicians feared the demise of live concerts
- when the popularity of recorded music first became obvious. But instead
- of a decreasing demand for live music, recorded music appears to have
- increased that demand (of course there were a lot of other factors at
- work, increased leisure time and disponsable income, that may well have
- been the most important effects). But Ong points out that during periods
- of media transformation, the new medium tends to *enhance* rather than
- *replace* the old, at least for a while.
-
- In the same way, any kind of e-mail activity appears to me to result in
- a net increase in the amount of oral communication that also occurs among
- the participants.
-
- Correction: Ong's essay is "Media Transformation: The Talked Book" in
- _Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and
- Culture_, 1977.
-