Question of the day: Why is memory a focus in a class on oral traditions?
So we have been instructed to go against what all of our mothers taught us from the ripe old age of 3: don't talk to strangers. We should talk to people on the street and eavesdrop on their conversations. Enevitably, unless you are a real creeper, after they notice you eavesdropping, you will probably be more than likely obligated to strike up some sort of explanation. However, I think the whole strangers things expires at least when you enter the realm of high school.
Also, we have written down a very meaningless conversation that I had with my roomate about a cooler of mine.
My roomate: "Have you emptied the cooler by the window yet?"
Me: "No cause there is nothing really important in it."
Now that we have indeed written it down, it is no longer ephemeral!
Yet another assignment we have been given is to fondle The Art of Memory and learn to appreciate it like the playboy centerfold.?????
Oh and a very intriguing quote for the day: Norman Marler believes that one of the worst things that has ever happened to the U.S. is indoor plumbing. This was very similiar to the argument against writing.
Once again to the Important Stuff:
Walter Ong Orality and Literacy p. 7:
"language is so overwhelmingly oral that of all the many thousands of languages - possibly tens of thousands - spoken in the course of human history only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficicnt to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all. Of the some 3000 languages spoken that exist today only some 78 have a literature."
Also, the invention of the printing press was one of the most influential inventions in the past 1000 years.
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