Post 4: Pictographs & Writing

I chose to discuss the National Park Service pictographs which depicts different areas and activities associated with the outdoors. These images are not limited to one language but rather are universally understood, which is one of the benefits pictographs have over written text. As Ignace Gelb states, the writing system is capable of transcribing linguistic statements while other types of graphic notation allow people to communicate through a widely recognized set of marks or signs. No matter what cultural background a person may have, they will still see the restroom sign and be able to distinguish which one is for men and which one is for women. However, without a pictograph to display this information, the language barrier may prevent someone from understanding which gender is being discussed.

A true pictograph is an image that conveys meaning by displaying the action, place or object mind. Though it does not use text, pictographs can be considered a form of writing because they create such meaning in the way the images are presented and combined with one another. For example, if someone was at a beach and saw two signs next two each other, one that showed a person swimming with a red line through it and another with a shark fin, that person would know not to swim in this area because of the risk of being attacked by a shark. These two pictographs replace the need for "Don't swim here or sharks will eat you" to be written on a sign in several different languages.

Drucker and McGann, authors of "Images as the Text", begin their argument by addressing the concept of pictographic logic, which is made up of elements such as organization as well as the medium through which the images are displayed. They state that it is founded on two principles: "the  description of an entity and the articulation of relations among entities." Furthermore, these principles can be used to transform written texts into their visual, pictographic state. The authors believe that pictographic logic is a way of understanding the abstract ordering of texts and images.

The example of the Sumer tablets displays an instance when image and quantity worked together to create meaning. The first sign, being a true pictograph, served to depict the actual item while the second sign operated as part of an abstract code which tells the viewer how much of the item there was. This combination of pictographs and a form of writing is an example of how the two mediums aid in each other's overall meaning.

Noegel's article on the relationship between ancient forms of writing and our current cyber-culture makes a few interesting connections. One in specific is the Mesopotamians who drove clay cones with prayers inscribed on them into buildings, believing the words would hold it up. Similar concepts such as building a web site to set the foundation for a career exist in our culture today, which shows how many of our associations with writing have not changed over time.

Post #3: Reading Revolutions

The shift from "intensive" reading and re-reading of very few texts to "extensive" reading of many that was observed in the 18th century restructured how people relied on information and utilized books. Instead of reading one text so many times that a person could recite its lines and remember every detail, readers diversified their intake of text and therefore no longer spent time analyzing specific details and concepts from a particular book. This led to an increased reliance on books for information enforcing Socrates' opinion that writing destroys memory. Since people weren't re-reading one book over and over, their memory of any specific text wasn't as strong. I believe that this shift in reading trends affected the consciousness of the average reader by diversifying thought due to all the different ideas presented in the many texts that were read. Instead of just one opinion being heard again and again, people were exposed to all kinds of writing that promoted new ways of thinking and allowed discussion between two readers that went beyond the limits of a single text.

Post #2: The Greeks Begin Writing

During Plato's time, the Greeks effectively interiorized writing and, in doing so, a remediation of orality occurred. Instead of using mnemonic formulas, poets could utilize written text which in turn freed the mind for more original and abstract thought. Plato himself noticed that the formula poets had been following now had become counterproductive with the introduction of writing. Therefore, this moment in history describes a remediation as reform because it makes something that is already good better. It identifies a problem, in this case a dependency on memorization, that the society was unaware of and solves it by allowing poems and other narratives to have a permanent existence without relying on a person's memory. Plato's reservations about writing and its destructive threat to our memories ironically would not be here today without its development in ancient Greece. Still, he does make a valid point which is that today's society doesn't posses nearly as great of an ability to remember and recite information due to the fact that much of it is readily available in text somewhere.

Remediation of books

In an increasingly paperless world, digital forms of books on devices such as the Kindle or iPad have become popular not only for their ability to store hundreds of texts but also because of the widespread desire to "go green" and use less in order to help the planet. This process is a form of remediation on physical books, changing the medium through which readers utilize their favorite novels. As is described in the chapter on remediation as reform, digital books repaired a fault with the books that previous generations weren't even aware was an issue, that being the overuse of paper products and the effects its production has on the environment.

This chapter discusses several different meanings of reform, one being that the media reforms reality itself and another implying a change in a social or political sense. The idea of media changing our sense of reality can be seen most evidently with the evolution of virtual reality, which presents an alternate world which the media insists has meaning for us. The social and political sense in which reform has meaning stems from the digital world in which everyone has a voice and information is always close by, therefore giving each citizen the chance to inform themselves and communicate with their peers.

Perhaps the most applicable meaning of reform for the remediation of books is the idea that it serves to make a good thing better, improving on a previous model by fixing a fault or adding something that was lacking. It's not as if readers didn't know that books used paper and paper comes from trees, which leads to pollution in the process of cutting them down and processing them. However, the problem became more apparent when a solution was presented. Digital libraries are a remediation of books because they solve the issue of over-pollution and make carrying thousands of books everywhere you go an actual possibility.