First Blog Post - Reading

Marshall McLuhan’s chapter “The Written Word: An Eye for an Ear” looks at the phonetic alphabet of the Western world and compares it to other writings, past and present, that use “pictorial expression to oral meanings” (87). McLuhan explains, “There have been many kinds of writing, pictographic and syllabic, but there is only one phonetic alphabet in which semantically meaningless letters are used to correspond to semantically meaningless sounds” (83). This allows McLuhan to argue, as Todd. explains in his post, that the alphabet started “civilizing” humanity.

The alphabet does cause a disconnect form the other senses though. There are certain things that symbols portray differently than writing. McLuhan writes, “…instead of displaying the Stars and Stripes, we were to write the words ‘American Flag’ across a piece of cloth …the symbols would portray the same meaning, the effect would be quite different” (82).

McLuhan goes on to explain that writing is a convenience and literacy is “changing our habits, our emotions, or our perceptions” (87). While this was written in the 1960s I can see how this can apply to us today. The texting age has created a whole new way to write, and it has affected us culturally. People communicate with each other differently, new terms (LOL for example) come into our vocabulary, the amount of contact, and type of contact, we have with people is different, etc. Blogging is also a new form of writing. The Western world is trying to get out of the linear logic and is trying to “invent nonlinear logics as we do to make non-Euclidean geometries” (85). In non-Euclidean geometry, you are told that everything you have been taught about Geometry is wrong. In non-Euclidean geometry squares do not exist and triangles do not add to 180 degrees. If we apply that type of logic to our writing and language, what basic knowledge are we changing or disregarding?