Metamorphosis of the medium

The following column "Metamorphosis of the medium" by Aziz Ali Dad, source "The News-Saturday, June 12, 2010 ".

These days, deterioration appears in every sphere of life, including the human senses. Oral cultures clamour that the written culture is robbing them of their memory, academicians complain of proliferation of information without knowledge, musicians object to the alienation of the ear from the cultural realm and booklovers moan the decline of the written word. We feel as if our senses are falling apart and we cannot control them. Rather, one of our senses determines us by becoming independent from the whole.
Human beings, through different historical stages, have relied on different media to engage meaningful communication. With the emergence of speech they had started conceptualising and storing ideas in memory. Although writing was invented in 3500 BC, it did not dominate the spoken word until the printing press came along.

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