Post-Literate Neo-Oralcy

Dear American Literati
and Colleagues Across the
Curriculum.
 

To re-play:
 
           Literate
Oral     Post-Literate, Neo-Oral
 
These 3 could be taken as stages/ages/phases
OR as modes—just in our class, for example:
the 3  operate if not simultaneous, then in & out
—one mode figured while the other two are
back-grounded.  .
 
Pluses & Minuses and trade-offs associated
with each one, so that at any point anyone
can accuse any other of being deficient
in one of the venues while pumping up a
venue-of-preference.
 
Look: I’m TALKING HERE.
 
Ok ok—but I wish you’d write it down.
 
The 3^rd mode/age (I’m calling post-literate,
neo-oral) is really what’s happening now:  our
post-modernization going on: a mix of  e-mail,
i-pad, laptop, blackberry,  skype, cell-phonic,
I-phonic, texting,  sexting… the MEDIA is the
message and what we might could be talking about
and not just what we’re talking about—you know:
the subject-object, matter: textual harassment 
I call it—as  opposed to contextual.
 
(Phil: was that so hard to follow?) .   
 
When I was your age and walked uphill  to college
and back both ways, we used  typewriters  to write
our thesis-driven and well-documented papers and
you had to employ ese-erase (Wite-Out) liquid eraser
to eliminate errors, or else rub the page with a hard
rubber wheel that had a brush on it for whisking away
the residue until someone  invented strips of plastic
you could type-out (Wite-Out) over your error and then
re-type and proceed with your academic  expostulations.
Slow work--& every mistake would take TIME if not
SPACE to correct, to be correct.   Errors were such
a nuisance.
 
Now: you and I can argue back and  forth like anything—
improving each  others terms and  getting smart and
marter riding on top of our stunned stupidity—students
studying  like anything.,
 
Of course, there’s the so-called intimidation problem.
 
I don’t know what to do about THAT.:  
 
We haven’t yet figured out the Internal ENVIRONMENT
(not the polar-bear one) that transforms so-called intimidation
 into  Yes We Can—encouraging the proper fight-club,
wrestling & towel-snapping kick-ass cerebral  gymnastics
that are Just Right for the practice of liberal art.
 
(Not to be confused with them liberal arts you major and
minor in: instrumental, vocational,  getRdone, cover-the-ground arts.)
 
  xxxooo, Sam
 
(Feel free to improve my terms and images, as well as my
assumptions and implications, or what’s a college for?)