As Time Flies By...

A blog entry about my research “paper”: Exciting! And no, I am not being facetious; I really am excited about this project. Finding out that I can create a creative piece of literature for this sparks my interest and gives me a spring board for some interesting inspiration. I’ve decided to write a short story exploring the evolution of language and the benefits and possible consequences of such. My brainstorming goes as follows:
· Cyclical society evolution
o Most of history unravels in cycles
o With the advent of electronic media, massive amounts of information are pumped into mainstream society
§ With time will:
§ Censorship increase?
o Forced/ imposed censorship?
o Welcomed censorship?
· Censorship decrease?
o Totally free media in the wake of social “enlightenment”?
§ What constitutes social enlightenment? Is it brought on by mass media? Seclusion/personal study?
· Print culture vs. Orality
o With time:
§ Would society grow to depend more or less on print media?
· i.e. words as opposed to flash animation or dialogue such as the news is today?
o News is spoken; society watches and listens to reporters speak the news but will time put more emphasis on written information such as articles in an online newspaper or magazine?
§ Would society grow to depend more or less on visual information?
· Pictographic or live visual representations of information as opposed to written info?
o Would people begin to speak in abbreviated formats?
o Would that change language as a whole in orality?
§ An increasing need to shorten information in order to increase quantity?
· i.e.: text messaging, instant messaging (new languages?)
· Transference to speech from written?· If society evolves into a purely literary state, what consequences would result?
o Literacy = necessity?
o Loss of orality?
o Discrimination more prominent between literate and non literate people?
§ Superior = literate
§ Subordinate = illiterate
§ Purposeful and calculated education for breeding purposes?
Highlighted are the concepts that intrigue me the most. The idea that society could evolve into a purely literary state of consciousness where in all information is transferred through visual representations of concepts (words) and those who speak, or need to speak, in order to transfer information are somehow subordinate. On the converse side, those who are able to refrain from such a “backward” and “ancient” way of communication such as auditory speech are the intellectuals, the elite, the controlling echelon in such a society.

Such a short story would ask the question: What if society became a discriminatory totalitarian concept in which those who still speak, those who depend on Orality, are subordinate to those who communicate solely through textual transference? In order to research such a concept, I would have to study the direction that humanity has been traveling in with regards to textual media vs. visual information, it’s play in societies across the globe, it’s central or decentralization, and then project, though analysis of already recorded evolution, the direction society may be headed in at this point in history.

I’m not entirely sure if this is the exact direction I will be going in but I do know that what I write will be a social commentary on the conceptual ideologies of “advanced” or “remedial” as we discussed in class at the beginning of the semester. Just because it is different than the widely accepted norm doesn’t make it backwards ( ancient ways of oral communication were often more complex than standards today).