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January 8, 2006
"Abundance of Books Makes Men Less Studious"
Spring semester starts on Monday, and as I've mentioned, I'll be teaching three sections of a sophomore "Media and History" course. On Monday, I'll do the typical first-day stuff and set up Wednesday's discussion of Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy: Writing Restructures Consciousness," which focuses in part on Plato's misgivings about writing ("writing destroys memory, those who use writing will become forgetful").
This is a long way of explaining why I've linked to web versions of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and Phaedrus, which I'm hoping to discuss (or at least introduce) in class on Monday.
Update: Just came across this interesting and creepy flash video, EPIC 2014. Might make for an interesting discussion with my students.
Update 2: While I'm linking, SHARP has some great resources for teaching print culture.
Yet another update: The last time I checked, Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Project and Manifesto was down, but it might be a useful resource for my course as well (and, while I'm at it, this April 2005 article complicates Sterling's original project).
Posted by chuck at January 8, 2006 3:14 PM
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