"Oral societies must invest great energy in saying over and over again what has been learned arduously over the ages. This need establishes highly traditionalist or conservative set of mind that with good reason inhibits intellectual experimentation. ... By storing knowledge outside the mind, writin...
Continue reading ..."Fortunately, literacy, though it consumes its own oral antecedents and, unless it is carefully monitored, even destroys their memory, is also infinitely adaptable. It can restore their memory, too. Literacy can be used to reconstruct for ourselves, the pristine human consciousness which was not lit...
Continue reading ...Among other classical rhetors, Plato greatly downplays the worth of the written text, believing it is an approximation of orality and that orality is an approximation of thinking. He considers writing an unnatural method of recording knowledge. Additionally, he argues that it brings forgetfulness, k...
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