Often, when we think about the word “writing,” the most simplistic ideas come to our minds. Some of those thoughts may be that writing is something we just do on paper and pen, or something that was taught to us in grade school. The alphabet, sentences, sentence structure, grammar, handwriting, etc. are all categories that do fall under the large category of what “writing” is. However, the term “writing” has a long history of development and change—it may not be as simple to explain. This chapter is intended to shed light on  ideas, theories, and thoughts about the history of writing, its development, and where we stand on what writing really is today. Hopefully, by the end of this chapter there will be a better understanding of the history of writing, and the simplistic thoughts of “writing is just using the alphabet to write words or sentences” will be turned into a deeper, more complex understanding of writing as a whole and the history of it.

The Ancient History of Writing; Oral Communication (Orality)

Think back to about 2,500 years ago and how humans used to communicate with each other. The discovery and practical skill of using a quill, ink, parchment, or even stone to engrave words or phrases to be kept forever and shared was not the start of our writing history. Yet, it was  something that came hundreds of years later. So, how did humankind communicate with each other without sharing their thoughts through writing? The answer is through oral communication or “orality” as Walter Ong describes it in “Old Media, New Media, and Knowledge.” Before we began to write things down (2,500 ago) communication with one individual to another was all oral and based in sound and use of the muscles in your mouth and tongue. Before writing became a wonderful power of human skill, oral communication was the start of forming sounds as a way to inform others about ideas, stories, or even information. Writing is nothing without orality; being that orality is the use of  characterizing speech. In fact, we would not be able to write if we did not have orality or oral communication to turn those sounds/ speech into written words.

Diving into this complex history, it is imperative to mention something that can tend to lean towards the philosophical spectrum of thoughts and concepts. The reason why I am mentioning “philosophical spectrum” is due to the fact that Ong mentions how some individuals (mostly indigenous or smaller populations) only use oral communication without literacy. With that being said, those individuals who just use orality are not learning or retaining information of “Natural Human Languages” (which is the development over time of new words or ways to express themselves) and by not writing these down does not dictate an “official language.” Ong debates that “written language allows people to carefully examine ideas that are arrested in words;students and scholars can keep poring over a sentence or passage that explains a thing or idea at their own pace, reflect on the meaning of each word or phrase and the sequence of words, then come to an overall meaning of what has been written” (Applen, 23) The development of writing and literacy is crucial for the rapid development of humans and their ability to learn, retain information, and of course communicate. Unless someone can remember exactly everything that you have heard, it is more difficult to reflect on than a text that has been written down and that you can keep going back to that has not been changed. The inability of the non development in oral cultures (cultures that have not developed since ancient times) show issues to understand things such as “geometrical figures, abstract categorization, formally logical reasoning processes, definitions, comprehensive definitions, or articulated self-analysis.”

Orality, Literacy, and The Learning Process of Humans

Moreover, writing runic symbols on stones by vikings  was just the start of writing down our orality as something to be shared and turned into literacy. The Greeks, however, around the time of Plato were the first to fix oral speech in writing form. “Freed the mind for more original, more abstract thought” (Ong, 24)  In an oral culture, people took literature, scriptures, ideas, philosophy by “hearing it” not reading it- which is why the learning process of ancient humans was not developed or vital information and discovery may have been lost or changed over time, hindering or losing important key aspects of our past. Simply because, literacy was not something to help oral communication or orality. Plato lamented the loss of the practice of oral communication because he believed that humans would lose our ability to memorize things if we began writing ideas down. For the invention of “writing” would produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it and would not practice their memory. Ironically this idea was written down in “Phaedrus” a written text and without that written text, we would never know what Plato thought about writing as a new technology. However, through Socarates, Plato, and Phaedrus (the written text) it allows us to see the complex thoughts and debates about literacy and orality and back that back then, written words, however they are portrayed, as a “strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of the painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence” I believe that the debate about having literacy in place as a method of communication and remember was seen by ancient philosophers as something that if not understood or challenged would have “no power to protect themselves.”

However, as we have learned the stoics learned to use orality and literacy as a powerful thing if used in the right way-shared, questioned and debated upon by others. I believe that the history of writing started through orality, led to literacy, was debated upon and then joined together as one force. As a theory, the Greek philosophers may have debated literacy as a form of keeping their ideas/thoughts last forever due to the possibility of misconceptions or misinterpretations of text. While the language of two or more people exchanging ideas allows them to change and clarify their words as they make adjustments for their audiences. As it is evident now, the “written word” allows us to produce more “abstractly sequential, classificatory, explanatory examination of phenomena or stated truths. A writer can always go back and carefully craft sentences until they reflect what the writer is really trying to say. Coming from a literate culture, it allows humans to transfer the communication patterns they have learned or interiorized from the practice of writing to the way we speak. Overall, the main point in this section is that if humans just kept oral communication and had not discovered literacy the knowledge once required had to be constantly repeated over and over again or it would be lost and forgotten.” It is key to understand that orality and literacy are both methods of communication which affect the way we think, speak, and write. Speech and communication will never be arrested in time which is why the discovery of writing (literacy) was a powerful discovery which allowed us to keep ideas, speech, sentences, stories, theories, etc. as a permanent keepsake for generations to read and share… without writing and literacy we would not have any record or hard evidence of what our past ancestors thought or went through during that time period or era. Thanks to the discovery  of literacy or the “written word” it changed the way humans communicate and kept a record of ideas, thoughts, or phenomena.

Writing is a Technology

Writing is a form of technology. This may sound confusing and incorrect at first but in fact, writing is a form of technology.  When thinkinging about it in a non-primitive way,  communication technology or any form of communication software, during the information age was not invented in the 1980s. In fact, writing, as we all know, has a long ancient history. It is hard to see writing as a technology because we imagine writing as something  primitive (like being given pencil, paper or even a quill, ink or piece of parchment.) when compared to computers. Yet, writing is a technology because it exists outside of our minds; humans needed to reinvent an alphabet and something to write with and on so they could record and see what they were thinking, and thus was extraordinary. However, writing today is remarkable- it allows us to share ideas, thoughts, or concepts with anyone in the world instantaneously.  Writing involved the use of tools and techniques to record and communicate information in many ways, such as: externalization of thought (allows individuals to externalize thoughts, ideas, and knowledge showing them in a shareable form), mediation of communication (enables people to communicate across distances and generations), encoding and decoding (writing involves encoding thoughts and ideas into written symbols), Standardization (writing leads to standardization of language and facilitation comprehension and consistency) and Evolution and innovation (writing has evolved over time from early pictographic and hieroglyphic systems to writing technologies like pen and paper). Considering writing as a technology highlights its transformative impact on human society, facilitation communication, knowledge, transfer, cognitive development, and cultural evolution.

Writing as a Discourse

Writing as a discourse, refers to the study and analysis as a form of communication or writing has rhetoric (that is a whole other ball game though.) Writing as a discourse examines how written language is used to convey meaning, express ideas, and engage with different types of audiences. The term “discourse” refers to the social and cultural context in which communication takes place; including various conventions, rules, and practices which shape the production and interpretation of written texts amongst others.  Writing as a discourse can take place in our history of writing as well—it recognizes that writing is not a solitary act but rather a social practice influenced by a writer’s intentions. The term discourse is an umbrella term of its own, but when we apply discourse to writing, we can begging to consider and explore the ways writers interact with readers and how they construct their texts to achieve specific goals, through: genre, audience, context, or even  rhetorical strategies (persuasion or argumentation.)

This section is mentioned due to the fact that writing as a discourse is a vital part of our writing history because it examines the social, cultural, and historical context in which written texts are produced, interpreted, and circulated. Understanding the importance of writing as a discourse allows individuals to analyze how written language has been used throughout history, how it has evolved, and how it has shaped societies over time.

The Writing Space; Age & Late Age of Print

As Ong describes in his works in Applen’s “Writing for the Web,” “writing has had a profound effect on us… what is writing and how it has a place on a computer screen.. Contrasting it with traditional writing.” (Ong, 12)  This quote taken from Applen, gives us a start on describing what a “writing space” is. As stated by Ong, the written space is a material and visual field that we compose on and read from, and it can take the form of such technologies as papyrus, paper, or a computer screen. The writing space, even writing on a computer screen is a “material practice.” It can become hard for a certain culture or person to decide where thinking ends and the materiality of writing starts… in simple terms the mind of a writer begins, where the mind ends,  where the writing space begins. The term “writing space” can be referred to the physical and conceptual environment in which writing takes place and through the age of print and the late age of print, we can see how much the writing space has evolved over time. For this section, It is important to go over J. David Bolter‘s interest in “how the changes in writing spaces have affected our ability to think and communicate with each other” Contrary to Ong’s belief that “writing restructures consciousness” (Ong, 77) Bolter pushes these theories by placing writing in two different historical ages which pertains to orality and literacy. The age of print and the late age of print have differences that are imperative to our writing history.

The age of print and the late age of print points out the differences between “traditional writing.” Before the printing press, which was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, handwriting was the primary source of orality and literacy. People would copy manuscripts by hand and share them amongst others,  which took a lot of time and was costly for as well. The age of print, though, had a profound impact on the spread of literacy and the standardization of language which brought upon  the development of publishing industries, turning the age of print into the late age of print. As Bolter states, the “late age of print characterized the age we are living in now, where we still use print but in electronic formats such as word processing programs, email and the World Wide Web.” (Bolter, 2) There is something to be carefully analyzed here, which is that the age of print was the start of the development of writing and reading being shared globally & rapidly. We as humans live and read in an age where “traditional” print form is indispensable, as in some information that we need can still only be found in print but that no longer seems indispensable since the late age of print has allowed humans to transfer more traditional print to electronic formats. Although the debate on if traditional print text will be transferred to digital printed text because, this flexibility threatens the definition of good writing and careful reading–  undermining texts, and disrespecting authors who produced writing in traditional ways that have came during the age of the printing era. However, as Bolter states, “because we can write and change what we write so readily with word processing softer (in the late age of printing) what is written loses its force as a powerful, perfect, and unchanging body of works.” In order to fully understand the important of age print and the late age of print and its influence on writing and history, Bolter mentions the term “remediation” as a way to officially separate the differences of both categories for writing.

Remediation

Remediation, when it comes to writing history, and the age of print/late age of print allows us to perfectly describe the shift to a newer form of writing, writing discourse, and literacy. In the context of writing, remediation refers to the ways in which written texts are adapted, repurposed, or transformed when transitioning from the age of print to the late age of print, where digital technologies play a significant role. In the age of print, remediation involved the translation of written content from one physical medium to another. As an example, a written manuscript could be remediated into a printed book, newspaper, or article that can be repurposed into a pamphlet. During the age of print, remediation focused on transferring content between different printed forms, but maintaining the core textual aspects. As a concept, “remediation illustrates how all media are based on signs or texts that refer to thighs that are continually reshuffling and changing their relative values as we move on to newer communication through technology” (Bolter, 19) During the time of orality, and our past ancestors writing things down on papyrus, people could still hear the words as they read them but also see them, giving the words a “claim to reality.”  Around the 1980s, when technology and writing became powerful,  is when we begin to see the shift from age of print to late age of print through this concept of remediation. This remediation in the late age of print will be constantly evolving and changing as new technologies emerge. In the late age of print, we can see some key differences in remediation such as: digital conversion and e-books, online publishing, social media & blogging, digital journalism, hyperlinking, digital archives and libraries and many other aspects which has caused the shift in writing.

Overall, the term remediation, which is an important term that Bolter discusses in his works about the age of printing and the late age of printing, has played a pivotal role in shaping the evolution of writing practices. This transition that we see from traditional print to digital technologies has brought new possibilities for adapting, transforming, and enhancing written content. As humans continue to navigate and develop technology, especially for writing spaces, remediation will remain an integral process, bridging the gap between the printed age and the digital realm; reshaping the way we create, share, and consume written content (or literacy).