What I love most about written language is its ability to
communicate through time. Anything I write down now can be read again in 10
years or even further. I could leave advice for my future relatives after I
pass away or leave them stories of my life for them to look upon and see how
much the world has changed. Someone could even discover the cure to a disease
and even if we somehow disappeared and a new generation of humans found it,
they would eventually be able to understand what that cure was. It’s quite
amazing really.
There is one draw back when it comes to written language and
it’s that there is no context to go with the information stored on that piece
of paper. The Chapter discusses this issue a little bit and talks about how Face-to-Face
interactions can give a lot of contextual information vs something being read
on paper. For example, when we read documents from hundreds of years ago and we
see something rather different than what we do today, we might think that it’s
barbaric or maybe even better than today’s standards. However, without being
able to see the context that these writings were written in, we truly have no
way of knowing what the actual feelings of the writer were or if the actions
were deemed normal back then, etc. It’s tough to truly know what exactly these authors
meant and yet we pretend like we know exactly what they intended.
I think the Bible is fine example of this kind of
interpretation. The Bible was written a very long time ago and hundreds of
years later we still utilize it as a base for our actions. We read it, interpret
it, and then go about our day as if everything we do is justified based on
those interpretations. The Bible was used as an excuse by slave holders back in
the day to punish slaves for their “misbehavior” and thus it allowed severe cruelty
to exist when there shouldn’t have been. This is but one example, however it
goes to show that while the ability for written language to pass on information
for years to come can be great, it also has its drawbacks and that’s
interpreting the context in which the information was written.
After reading this chapter I found myself wondering: how do
we make sure that language down the road doesn’t present misinformation or
misinterpretations? Is that possible at all? The chapter also discusses the
potential of audio recordings and what we are able to glean from them. Unlike
written language, audio recordings allow a listener to hear an accent, a tone,
an attitude toward a thought, etc. There’s a whole new wave of information that
can help develop context from just sound. Face-to-Face is obviously the best scenario
in which the correct context can be obtained due to visual of surroundings, facial
expressions of the speaker, etc.
Written language may last longer than other medias, but with
the way technology is advancing, video recordings may be more accessible than
writing in the future. Our ability to store electronic information is getting
better and I even remember reading about the idea that scientists are working
on figuring out how to store information on DNA strands so that if anything
happens where physical or electronic copies are no longer available, information
will live on within us and will remain accessible for much longer periods of
time.
It’ll be definitely interesting to see where written
information takes off, but for now I am content with being amazed at how we are
able to communicate with one another with just a few words on a piece of paper.
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