A Re-Read of Ong

11/09/09

In my second reading of Ong's Article "Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought", I noticed a couple things I didn't touch on in my first blog. One of the major points Ong tries to make is that writing separates the known from the knowner. Now what does Ong mean by this? I believe that Ong means that writing seperates knowledge from a person that knows it and allows it to be passed freely to another person in the form of writing. This is evident in Ong's article "Between knower and known writing interposes a visible and tangible object, the text. The objectivity of the Text helps impose objectivity on what the text refers to. Eventually writing will create a state of mind in which knwoledge itself can be thought of as an object, distinct from the knower." Ong also argues an interesting point that writing separates academic learning from wisdom. This point I had a litlle trouble understanding but I waded into the troubled waters so to speak and came out with an aswer. Ong means that writing allows for information to be passed without the need for an apprentship or mentor Thus making it much widely spread to society. That is all from my re-read of Ong. I just wanted to address and clean-up some things i missed the first time I blogged.