How can we separate writing as a technology from ourselves such that we can recognize fully its presence and influence?
What are the fundamental differences between the oral word and the writing world?
Were the early criticisms against writing as technology valid?
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Walter and Ong contend that many people cannot fully recognize the influence of writing on our mental processes because we have internalized the use of this technology so much that we cannot separate it from ourselves.
They go on to suggest that while early criticisms levied against writing as a new technology centered on the notion that it was external, alien, and artificial, these were the exact reason why writing is so beneficial to us.
Walter and Ong argues that the most extensive function of writing is separation. Firstly, writing separates the known from the know-er, which promotes objectivity and rationality; secondly, writing separates interpretation from data, which prevents the erosion of data. I agree with the authors's arguments, and I believe that they summarize the effects of writing in a rather concise manner.
It is no surprise to most people that we as human beings suffer from a multitude of cognitive biases such as confirmation bias, misinformation bias, and many more. Not only that, we are constantly influenced by our emotional states that rationality and objectivity do not come natural to us. As such, writing provides an avenue for us to record our thoughts and mental processes in a way that we can repeatedly re-evaluate and edit them. And through this process, we can recognize our biases and distance of our emotions from the things that we have written to achieve a greater level of objectivity.
Furthermore, writing offers us the possibility to record and present data without enforcing our personal interpretation of the data as contrasted to using the oral form. When information is transmitted through oral expressions, facts get distorted based on individual's personal belief and his or her own understanding of the matter or how much they can remember. When two different persons tell the story of the same incident they experienced, you would most likely hear two different narratives. On the other hand, writing, while still possible to be inflicted by the writer's lack of objectivity, provides us a better medium for recording pure data because it requires us to be more critical of the information that we present, and thus readily reduce the possibility of substituting our personal interpretation or belief into the text.
Wong Kin
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