stone, clay, papyrus, Microsoft word

While discussing different types of writing surfaces in class, it occurred to me that everything from cave walls to an iPhone are simply mediums meant to convey ideas. What i mean by this, is that we use words, pictures, and our voices to tell something; a story, idea, or simple information, and as a result we need mediums to convey and carry these symbols and noises that somehow mean something to us. When it is all broken down, it is a little abstract. What is a word? And on a more basic level, what is a letter? It is a symbol that represents a sound, and when many of those sounds are put together, a word is formed. So a group of symbols, with sounds relating to those symbols, are joined together to create a bigger, longer symbol with a bigger, longer sound which ultimately relates to an object or idea.

Get it?

My point is that as arbitrary as words and their associated sounds are, they still mean something. And as long as they mean something to someone, they will have a purpose and an action. And now that we have mediums to type, print, text, photocopy, paint, and scan these words on, ideas and information can travel that much faster. Words may only be symbols, but now they are fast-moving and potent. When literacy ceased being the issue, speed of information became the new challenge and now that is being overcome.

Origin/al/s

With folklore having no written record in europe or africa, the stories passed on are essentially the same but differ with time and culture. As mentioned in class, when the game "telephone" would be played in grade school, once the story or sentence got to the end of the line, it would usually be highly skewed from the original variation. However, certain elements of the original statement can still be heard. For example the same amount of syllables and words can exist at the beginning as the end, or key words that stick out can still exist in the phrase at the end of the telephone line.

With this in mind we can start to see how folk tales evolved but shifted with time. For example, in the Darton reading, the first "little red riding hood" story, the girl wasn't even called little red riding hood, she was just called "a little girl." So obviously, the title of "little red riding hood" had to come from somewhere as the story was told throughout the years. Additionally, the gruesomeness of the tale has also been toned down. Riding hood's grandmother doesn't get chopped up and cannibalized by her granddaughter, but instead she and red riding hood are saved by the huntsman. Granted, he kills the wolf and both women pop out of its stomach undigested and un-mutilated (I'm not sure if "un-mutilated" is a word; forgive me), but that version is less vivd than "He killed the grandmother, pored her blood into a bottle and sliced her flesh onto a platter." In modern day terms, it would be equivalent to comparing a "Saw" movie to a "Harry Potter" movie. Yes there is death in both, but one is stark, gruesome, and bloody whereas the other acknowledges death but doesn't show the brutal reality of how a body can come apart.

So the question then arises as to the reason for these changes. Why tone down the gore? Why hold back? The answer, frankly, is arbitrary. These tales have evolved for hundreds of years through the dark ages, the renaissance, the victorian age and into modern day culture. Movies showing epic battles, unrelenting love, and odysseys are common place and repeated time and time again but with different characters and settings. So as times change, so does the perception of culture and humanity, and ultimately, our own reflections on these points as displayed through film/text/sound.

Technology helps???

Last winter semester I found myself forgetting to print out assignments and readings for class. I was so busy with other non-scholarly activities (work, music, family, rugby, etc...) that i would show up to my classes, usually late, and out of breath. As I embarrassingly squeezed my way to my seat, with many a "sorry" and "excuse me" i would look around and see most, if not all, of my classmates pouring over (or in some cases staring blankly at) a sheet of paper printed off of the internet. "Fudge" I would think, as i kicked myself in the ass, for not reading the syllabus. So i would then pull out my iPod touch, sign on to the internet, go to Blackboard, and proceed to look up and enlarge the the forgotten text. I would then sit in class and hunch over the five by two inch plastic device and follow along.

The beautiful thing about technology is that it is right there, at your fingertips, whenever it is needed. Books are wonderful, and the aesthetic of holding and reading a book will never wear off. However a Kindle, Laptop or iPod can now hold and access, literally, thousands of books, magazines, periodicals, films, essays, blogs, etc... from all corners of the planet. This means that whoever is using one of these devices can expand their knowledge of a topic exponentially with the simple click of a button. Books are useful, but to be able to access multiple books at once without being in a library is something that can expand a mind rapidly.

Unfortunately, the downside to these advancements is the speed and the resulting language that comes with excess information. Being able to read anything anywhere is great, but time is still needed to actually read. What i mean by this, is that like books, anything found electronically still has to be deciphered and read by a person's two eyes and deduced in their own brain. But because of the speed in which we can absorb all this information, shortened "AIM" speak has been steadily integrated into society so that communication - not necessarily language and text in general - can be quicker, read faster, and absorbed easier. Does this mean we are dumbing down, even though we have more ready information that ever before? In my humble opinion, yes and no. When it all comes down to a single point, it is what we want to gain from that technology that makes us more or less cognoscente of what is going on around us - wether it is considering world affairs or reading about a Paris Hilton nipple-slip.