UNIVERSITY OF NOVA GORICA GRADUATE SCHOOL ...

digital age. 41 Yet, considering the modes and strategies of communication it seems perhaps more
adequate to look at the history of communication and media in terms of: 1) (primary) orality
which presupposes face-to-face (one-to-one and many-to-many) communication and relatively
closely knit, territorially bound communities; 2) writing and print (the Gutenberg parenthesis), 42
characterised by a shift towards one-to-many communication transcending the boundaries of space
and time and are closely related to the rise of the nation and Romantic nationalisms; 3) broadcast
era (electric and electronic media, e.g. radio, TV, telephone) or the second orality 43 characterised
by the transience of electronically transmitted messages; and the 4) era of ubiquitous digital media
or digital media ecology, which remediates and repurposes previous technologies (as do previous
new technology) into a media ecology where text, sound and vision are converged. 44 Here it
should be noted that DME not only refers to its enabling technology, but also implies the scale and
pervasiveness of digital communications technologies, i.e. subsumes in fact the environmental
characteristic of the communication space which ‗invades‘ and fundamentally defines other areas
of life.
The line of distinction between these media modalities according to Ryan lies in that the text
―cannot be transferred into [...] [another] medium without significant loss,‖ or, might I add,
enhancement. However, what differentiates digital texts or narratives from other modalities is that
they ―depend[s] on the computer as a sustaining environment, and use[s] the screen (or any other
display device) as a stage for performance.‖ 45 The performative environment thus created isolates
the user in front of the screen physically from others, while in exchange providing the setting for
real-time, (inter)face-to-(inter)face, communication beyond the limits of space and time, and
sometimes beyond life and death. 46
Speaking of the screen, Pythagorean idea of the acousmatic (akousmatikoi) comes to mind. In
order for his pupils to be better able to concentrate, Pythagoras delivered his lectures from behind
a veil. Thus the students were unable to see the ‗producer‘ and were ‗exposed‘ to his voice only;
and forced to focus on his voice only. Later on, Pierre Schaeffer, the French composer and
41 See Marie-Laure Ryan, ―Multivariant Narratives,‖ in Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth (eds.), A
Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell, 2004, available from ,
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/view?docId=blackwell/9781405103213/9781405103213.xml&chunk.id
=ss1-4-9&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ss1-4-9&brand=default, accessed 8 August 2011.
42 See Jill Walker Rettberg, Blogging, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2008; see also Pettitt quoted above.
43 See Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy; see also Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins and Anna Reading, Save
as... Digital Memories, 3.
44 Ibid.; on many-to-many or the third orality, see also Lawrie Hunter, ―Text to speech to text: a third orality?‖
available at www.lawriehunter.com/presns/eurocall_070729.ppt.
45 See Marie-Laure Ryan, ―Multivariant Narratives.‖
46 See ―Romance Departed,‖ Chapter 4.
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