How the Secondary Orality of the Electronic Age
Can Awaken Us to the Primary Orality of Antiquity
or
What Hypertext Can Teach Us About the Bible
with
Reflections on the Ethical and Political Issues
of the Electronic Frontier

Robert M. Fowler
rfowler@bw.edu
http://homepages.bw.edu/~rfowler/
Baldwin-Wallace College
Berea, Ohio 44017

Abstract

In sketching the history of the "technologies of the word," Walter Ong hints at remarkable parallels between primary and secondary oral cultures. Primary oral cultures operate with the spoken word only, because (for them, at least) writing does not (yet) exist. Secondary oral cultures are literate cultures, such as our own, that have been rendered significantly oral/aural once again by the appearance of dominant new electronic communication media, such as television, telephone, video and audio recording, to say nothing of the ubiquitous computer. As different as ancient, primary oral cultures and postmodern, secondary oral cultures are, there are also some remarkable similarities that are only now emerging into view. In this paper I shall take hypertext/hypermedia as paradigmatic of the new electronic information technologies, and explore how coming to grips with hypertext/hypermedia might, paradoxically, help us to understand better ancient oral and manuscript cultures, generally, and the Bible, in particular. I shall also point out some of the most striking ethical and political issues arising out of the electronic revolution.

Outline

Foreword