Three special events in the history of technology for creating,  (Page 4/12)

A supportive commercial enterprise accompanied the development of literacy. At first, manuscripts were writtenfrom the orally composed stories. Perhaps Homer’s epic writings came into being this way. Later, manuscripts were composed directlyin writing, never having been uttered. An industry developed that would copy these “originals” under commission, as a tailor sewssuits. After a literate public developed, the scribes would make several copies of a manuscript and then offer them for sale much asa clothing store operates now. Along with this commercial side, a legal device came into being. If money could be made, the questionof ownership arose and the concept of the “right to copy” or the “copyright” was invented.

If we step back and look at this comparison of the oral and written cultures, we see still another interesting andpertinent dimension that has to do with physiology. If I tell you a story, then I transfer a piece of information from my brain intoyours. On the other hand, if I write that story down on paper and you read it, then I have also transferred the piece of informationfrom my brain into yours, but it has gone through a quite different part of the brain and nervous system. In the first case, a vocaland auditory process occurred. A blind person could participate. In the second case, an image and visual process occurred, and a deafperson could participate. In the first case, a person could address a crowd and a certain efficiency could be achieved, but in thesecond case, a much larger audience could be reached and spread over time as well as space.

Technology has continued to expand both the means of communication, with the telephone, radio, and taperecorder extending the vocal/auditory process and the telegraph, fax, television, and email extending the visual process. Is thiswhat the Sumerians and Greeks, the inventors of writing and the alphabet, had in mind? Surely not, but some unintended consequencesproduce phenomenally positive ends.

In this section, we have tried to indicate the incredible effects that literacy has had on human culture. Thepoint is that some of the predicted negative effects did occur and many of the positive effects that occurred were not predicted. Thiswas true because the negative effects were mainly the destruction of something that was known. The positive effects, however,involved the creation of things that were completely unknown in the preliterate culture. Some of those positive effects were initiallyseen as negative. These factors need to be very carefully considered as we try to predict the future of the next phase ofinformation systems. Indeed, the negative “unintended consequence” is the effect that we wish to understand and minimize.

Reading and writing seem to fit the definition of technology quite well and can be studied as such. For greater depth and more detail on literacy and writing, one should read theworks of Parry, Ong, Havelock, and Goody. For an example of how writing and literacy are viewed as technology, see Goody’s Chapter8: “Technologies of the Intellect: Writing and the Written Word.”