Ong Again

I'll admit, the first time reading Ong I didn't spend much time looking up words that I was unfamiliar with. This time, however, I did take the time and my understanding of his essay expanded greatly. Though it may come across at times that Ong is a "writer-basher", I think the last sentence of the essay provides enough evidence to the contrary. He states "writing is a consciousness-raising and humanizing technology". That last line made me think that the entire essay was a way to make the reader conscious of the ways that writing can be taken for granted or misused. I found him to be making a very clear point that, with writing and reading, there is a separation (or can be) between writer and reader. The two never have to be aware of each other (except for in the underlying sense of "I am writing something to be read" and "I am reading what somebody has written", respectively.) It is because of this, the fact that a first-hand account is no longer necessary for information to travel, that there becomes detachment. And this detachment can have negative effects (i.e. the many discussed by Ong), but the overall outcome is far more positive. Information has a permanence. The reader can be conscious of the writer, the writer can (and as we've learned, should) be conscious of their reader. That consciousness makes writing the humanizing technology that it is.