The Inescapable Town Square

In his 1982 book Orality and Literacy, Jesuit scholar Walter Ong set out to explore the profound psychic consequences when human societies transition from oral to written communication, drawing attention to how the medium affects not only the means by which we transmit information but also how we think and feel our way through the world. Ong identified significant eras in the history of human communication, with thresholds between them corresponding to the advent of new technologies — alphabetic writing, the printing press, and electronic media. Our digital media timelines, like oral communication, privilege the fleeting present; what we document — words, sounds, images, video — quickly recedes into the past.

Source: www.thenewatlantis.com