I've been thinking on Ong's writing on immutability of writing. More specifically how the internet is both complicating and destroying what he sees as the classical objection to text. This is, as I read it, that speech always came from a speaker and that, that speaker could be questioned and challenged. Print even when challenged remains immutable and aloof.
I'm sure there are myriad examples, but what comes to my mind immediately are wikis. The content is can be defined by anyone, and text becomes answerable to complaints. To a lesser extent even comment systems represent this new logic of written speech; a record of discussion,
Complications: authorship is going to the birds. Who's on the internet and who drops the N-bomb on every youtube video? The text is answerable but often the author isn't, so who is defending what. Someone told me that in a few countries it is illegal to use a pseudonym on the internet. Interesting if true. I don't want to ramble on further, I'm sure we'll cover these ideas in class tomorrow, but I see hoooooours of conversation on how the internet is updating the orality-literacy juxtaposition/development. Really it is appropriate the internet is called the great conversation.
Your post reminded me of an article I read a month ago in the New York Times about corporate employees editing their own Wikipedia pages. For example:
Last year, someone at PepsiCo deleted several paragraphs of the Pepsi entry that focused on its detrimental health effects. In 2005, someone using a computer at Diebold deleted paragraphs that criticized the company’s electronic voting machines. That same year, someone inside Wal-Mart Stores changed an entry about employee compensation.
The issue at hand here is the fact that, because of Wikipedia's structure, these employees can't be held responsible for their edits. A cool website called wikiscanner enables you to track an edit to a computer network, the development of which gave rise to the article in the first place: how else could you know that Pepsi edited the Pepsi page? However, that's where the trail ends. You can't pin the edit on a specific person.
That being said, I think that the internet actually creates a new, less immutable logic of writing, as you pointed out in your post. Wikipedia entries are about as mutable as you can get. And even if you often can't hold the "real" author accountable, you very often can hold his internet alias accountable, which is much more than you can say for a book.
i suppose this is an example of the "cooling off" process of a particular text-based medium that was in fact "overheating." in book form the text was uncontested, even though the author's name (and probably biography & photo) is clearly listed in order to give the illusion of accountability, when really the text cannot be contested within its original media. in wiki form, it is the text media itself, not the author, that is held accountable for its content. i think it's interesting that an increase in media accountability seems to parallel greater individual anonymity.