Some Thoughts of a Theologian in the Digital Age

在數位時代中一個神學家的一些想法

馬克．愛德華斯(Mark EDWARDS)

literacy ； orality ； memory ； authority ； printing ； digitisation ； 識字 ； 口述 ； 記憶 ； 權威 ； 印刷 ； 數位

哲學與文化

48卷9期（2021 / 09 / 01）

5 - 26

英文

This paper considers some of the consequences for education of the widespread shift from printed to digital resources. The first section argues against the common thesis that writing abolishes the need for memory and fixes the content of information, pointing out that books are an indispensable aid to the perfect recollection of any discourse, and that only the invention of printing made possible the standardisation of letter-forms and the mass production of copies. Widespread ownership of books also entailed that mastery of the contents of books was for the first time completely dissociated from oral delivery, with a consequent shift in authority from authors to readers, who were now able to choose how much they would read, and at what speed. This trend was counteracted by the power of teachers to choose which books should be easily available in libraries; in the digital age, by contrast, access to texts can no longer be restricted, the search mechanism enables readers to find what they are looking for without perusing the whole text, and nothing need be memorised since there is no fear that anything will cease to be available. This process has completed the reduction of the author to a ＂resource＂, and the special implications for the study of the Church Fathers can be deduced without difficulty.

這篇文章思考從印刷資源到數位資源的廣泛篩選對教育的一些後果。第一節反駁一個普遍的論題，即：寫作消除了對記憶的需求並固定了訊息的內容，指出書籍是對任何談論的完美回憶的必不可少的輔助，而只有印刷術的發明使得字母形式的標準化以及大量的複製產品成為可能。對書籍的廣泛的擁有還造成對書籍內容的掌握第一次完全與口述的發表脫節，隨之而來是權威從作者轉變到讀者，現在讀者已經能夠選擇他們想要閱讀的多寡與速度。這個趨勢被教師選擇哪些書應在圖書館輕易取得的力量所抵銷；相反地，在數位化的時代，取得文本不再受到限制，搜索機制使讀者可以在無需仔細閱讀整個文本的情況下找到他們所要尋找的資料，且無需記住任何東西，因為不必擔心有任何東西不能唾手可得。這個過程完成了將作者還原為某種「資源」，而且這對教父的研究可以毫無困難推論出這些特殊含義。

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