Saturday, November 20, 2010

Walter J. Ong

Human knowledge demands both proximity and distance, and these two are related to one another dialectically. Proximity perceptions feed distancing analyses, and vice versa, creating a more manageable intimacy.
As a time-obviating, context-free mechanism, writing separates the known from the knower more definitely than the original orally grounded manœuvre of naming does, but it also unites the knower and the known more consciously and more articulately. Writing is a consciousness-raising and humanizing technology. So is print, even more, and, in its own way, so is the computer.

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