From Oral Tradition to Electronic: Accessing & Disseminating Information
In Forms of Media as Ways of Knowing, Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi (1995) identifies three specific historical eras or periods in communication (43). The first and earliest period was one in which orality or the ôoral traditionö was dominant. The second period emerged with the development of print, or ôwritten communicationö. The third major historical period in communication was the result of the technological developments creating electronic media, the ôinformation ageö. Sreberny-Mohammadi (1995) distinguishes between these three eras as follows: ôIn orality, speaking and listening are the central activities. Print requires writers and readers. Electronic media demand organized production and viewersö (43). In other words, in each historical era of communication, control of communication mechanisms has varied significantly. These controls moved from the individual face-to-face encounter to the individual yet distant encounter of print to the yet more distant, depersonalized, and passive role of communication recipients in the electronic era. This analysis will discuss the evolution of these three eras of communication in order to provide a greater understanding of the role of communication in society and peopleÆs lives.
According to Richard Campbell (2003), an understanding of the role of the media in peopleÆs lives û both today and in the past û required an ôunderstanding of the cultural contextö in which the media operate (5). Oral communication is slow, moving from one person to another in a deliberate and time-consuming manner. Before the advent of communication technologies such as writing instruments and printing, oral tradition remained the primary means of passing knowledge from one generation to the next. Oral tradition represents the transmission of knowledge from one individual to another and one generation to another...