Alex Wright

Week in Review piece

December 2, 2007

The Times is running an article I wrote for the Week in Review section, exploring the social networking phenomenon in light of Walter J. Ong's theory of secondary orality.

This was a challenging piece to write, since I only had 900 words to cover a pretty large body of academic work, and to make the topic accessible without dumbing it down. Still, I'm sure some media ecology purists would argue that I've painted Ong's theory in very broad brush strokes here, glossing over some of the more subtle aspects of the relationship between primary and secondary orality. Anyone really interested in this material should go to the source: Ong's landmark 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.

Thanks to Lance Strate, Irwin Chen and Michael Wesch (of The Machine is Us/ing Us fame), who helped me flesh out my thinking and gave me some great interview material to work with. Also, a tip of the hat to Ed, who first pointed me to Ong's work.

> Friending, Ancient or Otherwise

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