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I was initially extremely impressed by the precision of the memories
of the class when I taught a unit on the presidential speeches from the
period immediately following September 11th. Four months later the class
seemed to remember each vocal inflection, nuance of tone, stammer, hesitation
over a word, and emotive pause. I had treated the president's speeches
as works that were conventional genre pieces, but it seemed as if the performance
of these speeches still resonated with undergraduates months later.
As we studied what had seemed to me to be lifeless scripts from the
official White House web site, they commented on both throat catching and
throat clearing moments as though the discrete experiences of hearing them
on television or the radio were still vivid. The mystery was solved when
my web-savvy class pointed out that I could easily click "Listen to the
President's Remarks" or "View the President's Remarks" simply by clicking
on the silhouette of a speaker or television screen. They had no need to
recall oratory that was instantaneously available on playback. |
