Orality & Literacy Ong: Second half

One aspect that really caught my attention from the second part of the book Orality and Literacy by Walter J. Ong was the section about print. Print basically revolutionized the orally dominated cultures at the time that orallity was basically the only choice you had of obtaining or passing down information. From what Ong investigated, people started to visualize the authority a simple print had. Not everyone at the time had access to print and so messages from different locations were passed down through print being that not many could replicate it or alter the text. From what the people at the time could assure, if it was written down it was final. As time passed manuscripts began to become more popular the reason was because passing down informational orally was not safest way to pass down the information. People would leave parts off, full descriptions would be misinterpreted. So manuscripts which are single author prints like a simple letter could now be put into one final script so that only the assigned viewer can read it and understand it. Because we started to have more people get involved with print, intertextuality, which is basically is the mix of authors to create one text or mixed of sources to create one print, became to be taken to granted by manuscript. The reason was because text like romantic notions became real popular because of its originality and creativity. Something that intertextuality didn’t have.  Because orality wasn’t really out of the picture when print came around the majority of the people would actually hand down the information through text and then orally speak about the information to the people they knew. 

This was a game changer. Everything changed for the better after literacy became a part of their culture. Information was better secured, genres of different type of text became more popular. And just in general everything official became related to print.Just like in today's world if its not set in stone by print your speech or actions aren't valued when it comes to judgement in authority.