Print: From Tyranny to Democracy

From Walter Ong's writings, I learned the term"chirographic" - that's handwriting, - and its impact is different from print's. Writing raises consciousness, Ong says, and I believe that's true both culturally and individually.

I remember friends who were studying for their PH.D.s in Education saying that getting their degrees had a profound impact on them, that it changed them deeply. I nodded, of course, and thought maybe they were exagerating. Now, I'm beginning to understand what they said. Part of it is simply the reaction from people around who honour and value this achievement, but reading Walter Ong has convinced me that it is also the impact of the prolonged meditation that writing a thesis is. People are changed, - I am feeling the change of attitudes towards me, and a complex of awareness that my writing has created within me.

The most important seed of my writing was my learning to write using a computer and word processing software. My handwriting blocked my writing because I regarded it as visually inadequate, signalling low status thinking and it was physically difficult too. Also, my years of intense reading and the academic culture had caused me to think that the only "real" writing was that which was printed. Books were "real writing" and handwritten notes were just rough notes, no matter how much I had tried to do a good job of writing.

Because of the material structure of publishing, few people got to be published. It was expensive and complex to do and so there were many gate-keepers. Thus, the tyranny of print, more visible now as the stranglehold of published is being loosened and lessened. Word processing, desktop publishing, web sites, and blogs are creating a new democracy of print, where individuals with access to comparatively inexpensive equipment and communication links can present their ideas, thought, words, to a much broader audience with few, if any, gatekeepers.

This is creating a new understanding of communication using print. Using keyboarding and software knowledge (and online computers) is different from using chirograhpically produced text and the publishing industry. We are learning this new thinking/communication tool, and beginning to understand that it affects us profoundly.