COMMUNICATION THEORY ASSIGNMENT.

QUESTION 1

Gutenberg’s Galaxy

As Postman says (p. 31), “Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time.” His point is that putting things in print makes the nebulous concrete and forces the communicator to stand forever in relation to the printed document. This brings out one of the powerful impacts of print technology—its permanence as a social memory. What might have been forgotten now becomes a permanent reality. Can you identify a circumstance in your own life where putting something in text led to bad consequences as circumstances or contexts changed? How did the readers relate what you wrote under one condition when you were now under a different condition (and texting drunk does not count )? What did the medium do to your expression and how might you have changed what you wrote now that you have experienced the negatives of its permanence?

125 WORDS

QUESTION 2

The Textual Mind

One of the points we are generally ignorant of, but which Postman wishes to draw to our attention, is how texts shape our thinking. Texts are much easier to follow logically and sequentially than are oral narratives (the major preceding way of communicating), and allow the development of long, tedious and carefully logical thought developments. We have all run across the long boring memo, but we need to think about how much information is carefully packed into that long boring memo that could not be communicated orally. Think about what your work would be like if information was only transmitted orally. How would you help people remember your points and what would people need to tell you (and how often) in order to get your work done? Could you even do your work? What are the differences in thinking that would help people remember your spoken words the same way they can refer to your written words? What is the difference? How much easier is it to write logically what would otherwise be hard to communicate? What do you come to expect from the communication of others because of this possibility? How do you think because of texts? (And do you now begin to understand why we make you write so many essays?)

150 WORDS