Electracy

This blog will be completely different than others because, frankly, I have no idea what I’m talking about. In his book Electronic Monuments, Gregory Ulmer discusses our move from literacy toward electracy (in the past we moved from orality to literacy) and the ways in which our understanding of the world is changing because of this. In his book Orality and Literacy, which made much more sense than Ulmer’s book, Walter Ong discussed the ways that thinking changed as our cultures changed from one’s that relied primarily on orality and became one that was literate. I get a sense that Ulmer is attempting to do the same thing: trace some kind of path between literacy and electracy.

In fact, Ulmer uses as one of his main examples in his introduction (which I found to be the most easily understood) the move from orality exemplified in pre-Socratic understanding toward literacy that was exemplified by Plato (and beginning to be understood through Socrates). Though Socrates never wrote anything, his understanding of the world was shaped by literacy. This example is very similar to the example used by Ong (and many theorists that discuss the different between written and spoken word and the ways in which the spoken word is often privileged over the written even today). In another similarity to Ong, Ulmer discusses the ways in which memories are shaped thanks to literacy and, now, electricy, and I believe this is the point of his Electronic Monuments though I have a hard time understanding it. Ulmer writes that “memory and identity have evolved with the changes in the language apparatus of civilization” (x), but I don’t believe that they have changed entirely. Memory is still fallible, as is language, and Ulmer discusses this throughout his book.

One of the most interesting aspects of Ulmer’s book is discusses throughout the first few chapters but explained best in his introduction. This is the idea of the “general accident,” a term which was coined by Paul Virilio. Ulmer explains that a general accident is “an accident that happens everywhere in the world simultaneously, related to the existence of the Internet” (xii). I think that this is a fascinating idea—the idea that an accident can happen everywhere in the world simultaneously because of the interest. I definitely agree that this is possible. Ulmer frequently uses the example of 9/11, but I think that a more recent example would be, say, the death of Steve Jobs. While many would argue that one person’s death is not nearly the same as the tragedy of 9/11, the news of Job’s death certainly spread quickly and similarly to that of 9/11 and this was, most of all, because of the internet. Almost simultaneously, people around the globe were learning of his death—not through news sources, radio, or television, but through social networking cites such as Facebook and Twitter. (I myself learned of Job’s death from Facebook.)

Though Job’s death certainly wasn’t “unremarkable,” the fact is that, without the internet, it probably would have been. Ulmer writes that “the appropriate site for mourning these ‘unremarkable’ disasters is the Internet as a living monument” (xv). These ‘unremarkable’ disasters he is discussing are traffic fatalities, which he discusses in chapter two of his book. He discusses the ways in which traffic related deaths can be memorialized by having a real-time print off of these deaths. What was once unremarkable suddenly becomes much more remarkable.

Technologies such as these create what Ulmer describes as “a single time—real time” that wasn’t possible years ago. This involves, I imagine, the idea of a socially constructed time. Without our label of “time” or the hour or what have you, there is a “real time.” Interestingly enough, while language created this time, it is technology that is attempting to break it down. Now that we realize that disasters in one part of the world can be experienced all over the world at the same time, the idea of a liner time seems much less important. Furthermore, the problems that arise are, in themselves, social constructs. Ulmer writes: “The basic premise of the EmerAgency is that problems, no less than the policies devised to address them, are social constructions” (xix). He then goes on to mention an example that Ian Hacking first noted: that of “women refugees.” Obviously, now that we’ve created such a concept, it’s easy to see that women refugees exist; however, without these words to describe this group of people, the idea doesn’t permeate our psyche.

Ulmer’s next chapters, which I don’t have much space to discuss, begin the dialogue regarding electronic monuments, which I haven’t been able to wrap my head around just yet. Though we were warned that Ulmer would be deep and difficult, the fact that my first blog regarding him was only able to cover a few points of the introduction is telling in an of itself.

Questions:

Have we moved completely from orality to literacy to electracy, or do we continue to show some semblance of them all?

How does the idea of the “general accident” shape our notion of truth? How does it call it in to question?

Ulmer writes that “societies from ancient Egypt to contemporary America have embodied their experience of death, loss, and separation in built constructions” but he is discussing society in general. How do individuals do this?