Technical Problems

The move to a Saint Louis University server seems to have caused some problems that need to be worked out. Unfortunately, I do not have complete access to the server, and the library will be closed until after the New Year. Until that time, I’ll keep posting here, which may be easier to use.

Walter J. Ong Collection Web Site

I'm pleased to announce, on behalf of the Pius XII Memorial Library at Saint Louis University, that the Walter J. Ong Collection Web site is now live. The Walter J. Ong Collection website seeks to provide scholars, students, and researchers with information about the Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection, to host a digital repository for collection materials, and to serve as a comprehensive resource on the life and works of Walter J. Ong, S.J. Our initial digital offerings include a number of unpublished lectures (typescripts saved as .pdf files), including those from his Lincoln Lecture Series in Africa in 1974, an audio recording of a lecture, and a number of photographs of Walter J. Ong and his family.

There will be much more to come over the next few months, and, really, many years to come.

Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archive has Moved

Notes from the Walter J. Ong Archive is being reborn as Notes from the Walter J. Ong Collection, and will now be hosted on a Saint Louis University server at http://ongnotes.slu.edu. The move is intended to give this blog official status and to join it with the soon-to-come Walter J. Ong Collection web site.

Ong and the Ecological Age

A number of people have asked me about an Ong quote I included in a CFP in which Ong suggests that we are in an ecological age:

The age in which humans existence is now framed, the age in which human life and technology so massively and intimately interact, can well be styled not only the information age and the age of interpretation, but, perhaps, even more inclusively, the ecological age, in principle an age of total interconnectedness, where everything on the earth, and even the universe, is interconnected with everything else, no only in itself but, ideally, in human understanding and activity.

That passage is from Ch. 12 of Ong's unfinished book Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization. Chapter 12 is titled "Language, Technology, and the Human" and the quote is on page 4 of the typescript. Ch. 12 is one of the more unfinished chapters (there are 13 chapters and a prologue which range from 3 to 28 typed pages). I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but the entire typescript is about 40,000 words. As Language as Hermeneutic does not yet have an item number, MLA bibliographic information would be:

Ong, Walter J. Language as Hermeneutic: A Primer on the Word and Digitization. Ts. Walter J. Ong Manuscript Collection. Pius XII Memorial Library, Saint Louis University.

Unfortunately, each chapter has its own pagination, so you'd need to indicate that it's on page 4 of chapter 12. Or you could go the easy route and cite this blog entry.

Those interested in the above quote should take a look at Ong's "Ecology and Some of Its Future," which was published in 2002 (Explorations in Media Ecology 1.1 (2002): 5-11). It's a short piece but a good one. And no, I checked and this quote isn't in the article.

Cross posted to Machina Memorialis.