Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind

Don't Trust Everything You Read in Books

L Don’t Trust Everything You Read in Books Let me get this straight—Don’t trust everything you read in books, eh? Curious phrase. And considering the thousands of libraries and bookstores packed with ton after ton of these apparently untrustworthy artifacts, a more than mysterious sentiment. So it’s only fair to step back and ask: Why in the world did we invent such a dismissive, nay-saying proverb (Proverbs)? Although cliché-driven wisdom of this sort is famously anonymous, at least three credible explanations present themselves. Three possible answers First, many of us have personal experience of being scolded by family members or friends disdainfully rejecting an indisputable fact (Just the Facts) or well-grounded opinion we’ve summoned from a reputable printed source. We cite an unimpeachable witness, and they seek to impeach our witness. Second, some of us have overheard this caveat as we eavesdropped—third-party–like— on an argument in which one person seeks to impugn an opponent’s textbuttressed position. Au contraire, in other words. Or third, we may well have been needled by a well-meaning (or maybe not so well-meaning) colleague who is querying the medium at least as much as its message. Here and now, so many years post-Gutenberg (Homo Sapiens’ Calendar Year), some miscreants actually prefer word-of-mouth, preprint fantasies to solid, stolid, page-bound truth. Imagine that. . . . The price of doing tAgora business Actually, the “miscreant scenario” is very easy to imagine once we get past ideology. From the perspective adopted by the Pathways Project, the third explanation qualifies as the most fundamental and far-reaching of the group. Why? Because it addresses the unavoidable, built-in price associated with doing business in the tAgora. Because it exposes the usually unexamined, below-theradar truth that there are some things (Reading Backwards) that books and pages (Texts and Intertextuality) just can’t manage. And whatever they can’t manage is by definition lost. Call it the “operating cost” or “overhead” or “tax” exacted by textual transactions , an automatic debit that we make it a habit not to notice. It’s an insidious situation, to say the least. We’ve grown so accustomed to paying this tariff that we overlook its damage to the medium-sensitive “bottom line” of creating and transmitting knowledge, art, and ideas. We ignore the damage, pretend it isn’t happening. Sad, because if there ever were a hidden cost that threatens to bust a communications budget wide open, the heavy tax on tAgora business must be it. Don’t Trust Everything You Read in Books . 77 But no complaints here. . . . Stop and think for just a moment about the shortfall we accept without complaint. In place of a Wikipedia entry (Freezing Wikipedia) that—if well configured—can leadtoyoutomanifoldexplanations,myriadlinkedtopics,andtheopportunityto shape your learning yourself, you’re sentenced to a one-way, blinders-on minitour of the book-author’s sole choosing. Alternate “takes” on a complex, many-sided subject? Not a chance. Related ideas? Only if they fit into the master recipe for the book-author’s carefully delimited concoction. Reader input to the process? Sorry; that’s well beyond the technohorizon, at least until another edition of the frozen, monolithic artifact can be assembled (and even then the likelihood of impinging on the book-author’s personal franchise is small or nonexistent). Exclusivity and economics The tAgora is exclusive, in both senses of the term, and it has prospered in its exclusivity. It demands that everyone play according to its narrow set of rules. It tolerates little or no extracurricular activities in its tightly controlled arena (Arena of the Text). Nonetheless, we happily accept these crippling constraints with every book we purchase, borrow, read, or write; with every paper page we track across or dog-ear; with every static virtual page we merrily scroll down through. And we do so because we’ve effectively accepted the ironclad agreement that governs tAgora business: in exchange for subscribing unreflectively to tAgora economics (and ignoring the economics of other agoras) (Citizenship in Multiple Agoras), we’re provided with a radically diluted, utterly monomedium, but quickly digestible message. And experience teaches that it’s easier to metabolize artifacts than participation. Sign the contract, forfeit what it declares null and void, and all will (seem to) be well. Nor does the litany of built-in tAgora shortcomings end there, especially with regard to the oAgora. The dire implications for OT Pity the poor nontextual aspects...