MDIA 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Walter J. Ong, Otto Neurath, Tristes Tropiques
22 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Proto writing: proto writing survives in the form of pictographs. Otto neurath (1882-1945: invented pictographic system he called isotype, his motto was words separate, images unite . Neurath envisioned a better society based on improved communication. Some of his principles are still present in modern-day pictographs: iso = greek for equal , he used isotype for social science statistics, many of our contemporary techniques of visualizing data draw on his work. Consequences of writing: writing detaches communication from the body. Plato"s dialogue phaedrus, in greek, contained in the codex oxoniensis. Clarkianus 39, 895 ad, kept at the bodleian library, university of oxford, The dialogue contains a criticism of written speech, establishing a pattern that recurs in posterior media revolutions: Writing will lead to loss of memory. Writing will create pseudo wisdom (distort the truth) because you cannot ask a written text questions, which increases the risk of misinterpretation.
