Schemata

I've set up the course with four main touchstones.

oral -> manuscript -> print -> digital

These eras overlap; all modes of communication continue to exist to the present day, but their function in society changes.

Oral Culture

• personal (one-to-one; one[-speaker]-to-many[-listeners])
• interactive
  
• memory and improvisation (the agora & the courts)
  
• limitation: the sound of the human voice
  

Manuscript Culture

• private (one-to-one; several-to-several)
• contemplative
• scarcity and fidelity (scriptoria and the church)
  
• limitations: access to writing materials; access to written documents (for study or copying); hundreds of hours of precision labor for each book
  

Print Culture

• public (one-to-many)
• compartmentized
• accuracy and efficiency (standardized manufacture, standardized education, university culture)
  
• limitations: cheap paper only lasts a few centuries; competition favors authors with mass audiences; mistakes harder to correct

Digital Culture

• impersonal (many-to-many)
• ephemeral
• immediacy and interactivity (erosion of privacy, erosion of print culture borders)
  
• limitations: spam & crap; competing notions of "ownership" (file-sharing and digital rights)