How are Professor Ong’s theories about culture, technology and humanity significant to contemporary society?
I think this goes back to what I was saying about Ong writing a deeply personal history of humanity in general and of Western culture specifically. A few years ago, we in North America (and I’m assuming the developed world as a whole) started seeing reports of how computers, and especially the internet, served as tools which kept us isolated from family and friends. What I found most ironic in these reports was that they always compared the isolating role of computers to the social role of television. Even when we watch television alone, it turns out, we talk about watching television when we get together with others. The irony here is that it wasn’t even twenty years ago when we heard reports of how television isolated us from our friends and neighbors. Before television, we used to spend our evenings out on our porches and in our yards and down at a local pub. Instead of sitting inside our houses watching television, we were outside interacting with our friends and neighbors. It was
