Construction and Deconstruction

I am struck by the ability to construct and deconstruct that stems from the use of writing as technology. As I read over our blogs for this week, two of them resonated with me because of their explanation of the role of writing in such different capacities.

Blogger Chris Davis shows in his blogpost, "Cavemen Probably Didn't Have Newspapers," Marshall McLuhan's argument "that written language was the primary catalyst for the development of civilization and advanced social structure in human beings" (Davis" is supported by the development of recorded information and tradable data that gave way to economies that would support an advanced civilization and structure like we have today. 

However, blogger Gabriel Vega points out the power of writing as technology in his blogpost "Reading Response 1: Writing as Technology." He uses the revolt in Egypt during 2011 as an example of how writing, as both technology and skill, can be a part of a revolution in which "Egyptian citizens marched the streets, held events, though not devoid of violence, and they occupied major government infrastructures as well as city squares" (Vega). Technology and writing were joined together across the globe to give a voice to these citizens as they tore down the pre-existing structure. 

I think that when you combine these two ideas, that writing can be both a constructive and destructive technology within a society, it helps support that idea that digitization may be cyclical. 

Walter Ong explains in his article, "Digitization Ancient and Modern: Beginnings of Writings and Today's Computers," how the progression of writing occurred in the Sumerian, the Chinese, and the Mayan systems (4). The discovery of ancient Sumerian hand-made clay markers indicate a system that can be crudely related to digital binary, as they are both "numerically discrete units used to process data for reckoning purposes" (4).

We are seeing now, through historical evidence, that ideas we've incorporated into the twenty-first century technological world also appeared, at a rudimentary level, thousands of years ago through the Sumerians. Each of those systems (Sumerian, Chinese, and Mayan) used each subsequent writing progression to tear down the old structures and construct new technologies and innovations. However, I would raise this question: is the deconstruction always positive? Does it always lead to a better, more innovative outcome, or are there examples of damage?

Works Cited: 

davisc47 [Chris Davis]. "Reading Response One: Cavemen Probably Didn't Have Newspapers" Chris Davis Elite Blog. Web. 4 September 2014. 

digitizerhetoric [Gabriel Vega]. "Reading Response 1: Writing as Technology" Digitize Rhetoric. Web. 4 September 2014

Ong, Walter J. "Digitization Ancient and Modern: Beginnings of Writing and Today's Computers."  Communication Research Trends 18.2 (1998): 4-21.