Response 2/16

"Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communications function and is available only to a small number of initiates."
This is the opening stage of literacy technology, according to Dennis Baron. Consider that before Gutenberg, the only class able to read and write were the wealthy educated elite and the clergy (which is why Baron refers to this group as the 'priestly class'). Baron uses the pencil to illustrate his point, claiming that before it gained such prominence as to be ubiquitous, the pencil was actually a highly refined and developed piece of literacy technology whose duplication by a hobbyist or layperson would be impossible.
Walter Ong's claim is that the basic nature of all speech is oral. This claim is backed up with the statistics I cited in my previous post, and this could lead some to the conclusion that this claim invalidates Baron's stages, since all communication is orally based and therefore egalitarian in nature.
However, Ong's argument does not necessarily extend to communication that exists for a purpose beyond communication. Graffiti as an art form, for example, closely follows Baron's stages: it experienced a rise from vandalism to legitimized art form thanks to the likes of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Shepard Fairey.
The extension of these ideas to technological literacy techniques such as blogging and texting does not invalidate them, but it weakens them. While both may have started in relative obscurity, one could not claim that texting was originally the domain of a 'priestly class' or that blogging was confined to the Ivory Towers of the higher learned.