Juan Monroy — Media Technologies: Class 2, Writing

Consider this a friendly reminder that you must read the assigned readings before class. Otherwise, you will not understand the material covered in lecture.

Language
- Signified
  - the actual object itself
  - presumably exists in nature
  - does it exist if it is unnamed?
  - what is our relationship to something that we cannot communicate?
- Symbols
  - things with special meanings
  - allow us to conceive
  - express and communicate ideas
  - ephemeral
  - arbitrary
  - learned
- Signs
  - subcategory of symbols
  - carry precise information
Orality
- there are no facts but only events
- sounds are ephemeral, evanescent
- naming
  - oral culture: conveys power over things
  - chiro/typographic cultures: labels affixed to an object
- thought processes
  - you can only know what you can recall
  - aides-mémories cannot be too complex
  - mnemonics: think memorable thoughts
    - rhythmic
    - balanced patterns
    - reptitions
    - antitheses
    - alliterations
    - standard thematic settings
  - complex (non-formulaic, non-patterned) thoughts could never be retrieved
- sound is relative to interior/exterior
  - interior to me is not to you
  - we cannot perceive where we are not
  - the cosmos is ongoing event with man at its center
Writing
- purposes of writing
  - information overload
  - propaganda
  - predict the future
  - tagging
  - accounting
- phonography vs. logography
  - Chinese and Japanese
    - sound based
    - Japanese added sounds
    - many more symbols
  - Europeans and Americans
    - fifty-two alphabetic symolds
    - semantic symbols
  - Modern hieroglyphs
    - phone
    - food
    - bottles
    - washing care instructions
Reason
- decrease in the power of the Church
  - clergy would administer affairs of the crown
  - oral confessions would keep anything from becoming hidden from the Church
- Islamic influence since the seventh century
  - Nestorians had kept
  - Alexandrine Museion (Alexandrian Library)
  - Classical Greek predecessors
  - drew distinctions
    - religious subjects
    - subjects to be used in the service of religion
    - secular sciences
- Chinese societies
  - life was subordinate to the common good
  - knowledge came from the use of reason
- Western Christianity
  - humankind was separate from natural things
  - animals and plants did not have souls
  - work to improve (civilize) on nature
  - monks tied work to prayer
    - productive mines
    - factories
    - developed agricultural techniques -
  - timekeeping
- Thomas Aquinas
  - Summa Theologica
  - philosophy in light of reason
  - theology in light of the revelation
  - realized the gift of rationalism into secular hands
- Roger Bacon
  - celebrated the work of Peter of Maricourt because he was a “master of experiments”
  - philosophy was a divine gift
  - theology did not oppress the sciences but put them to work
- rise of experimentation
  - thirteenth century
  - Roger Bacon
  - Robert Grosseteste
  - Theordoic of Freidburg: rainbows
  - Nicholas Oresme: compared universe to a clock