Caves to Cyberspace
Final Exam
1.
In “Homo Loquens,” Marshall Poe describes his theories on speech communication. Within his ideas, he points out disadvantages in speech, and how society tends to interpret it. One disadvantage that Poe pointed out was the idea of privacy, and how with speech, nothing can ever be private. “You have to be pretty good with masks, makeup, or false mustaches to fool anyone looking right at you, and most of us aren’t” (Poe 39). This quote is interesting because the masks, and the makeup are metaphorically relating back to voice, identity, and disguise. Poe is trying to explain that someone’s voice gives away identity, and there is nothing that can cover that up. No matter how many times you look at something, say your credit card, you probably do not remember ever number and its order, but it takes only once to match a voice to a face. Speech, and voice provides no privacy.
Another disadvantage of speech is that it is not permanent, you say one thing, and it’s gone the next. “You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or touch it. All you can do is remember it” (Poe 52). The problem with speech not being persistent is that memory has its disadvantages as well. There’s short- term memory, long term memory, and the fact that memory is also impermanent. We as humans forget things. Because of this, speech is not persistent. Words are not kept floating in the air, and words are not always stored in our memory. We speak so frequently everyday that only significant memories will be stored, thinking back to what was said yesterday, it’s almost hard to think of a single sentence. Speech is so fast and so frequent it is almost impossible to be persistent.
2. Although Gutenberg’s press was a significant part of the printing era, there were consequences that arose. One example being that the “destruction of Christian accord” began to occur when the printers translated the bible into the “vernacular” of many other languages. This removal of barrier
1.
In “Homo Loquens,” Marshall Poe describes his theories on speech communication. Within his ideas, he points out disadvantages in speech, and how society tends to interpret it. One disadvantage that Poe pointed out was the idea of privacy, and how with speech, nothing can ever be private. “You have to be pretty good with masks, makeup, or false mustaches to fool anyone looking right at you, and most of us aren’t” (Poe 39). This quote is interesting because the masks, and the makeup are metaphorically relating back to voice, identity, and disguise. Poe is trying to explain that someone’s voice gives away identity, and there is nothing that can cover that up. No matter how many times you look at something, say your credit card, you probably do not remember ever number and its order, but it takes only once to match a voice to a face. Speech, and voice provides no privacy.
Another disadvantage of speech is that it is not permanent, you say one thing, and it’s gone the next. “You can’t see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or touch it. All you can do is remember it” (Poe 52). The problem with speech not being persistent is that memory has its disadvantages as well. There’s short- term memory, long term memory, and the fact that memory is also impermanent. We as humans forget things. Because of this, speech is not persistent. Words are not kept floating in the air, and words are not always stored in our memory. We speak so frequently everyday that only significant memories will be stored, thinking back to what was said yesterday, it’s almost hard to think of a single sentence. Speech is so fast and so frequent it is almost impossible to be persistent.
2. Although Gutenberg’s press was a significant part of the printing era, there were consequences that arose. One example being that the “destruction of Christian accord” began to occur when the printers translated the bible into the “vernacular” of many other languages. This removal of barrier