Walter Ong: Writing and Orality

In his book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Walter Ong examines primary oral cultures (those which are totally unfamiliar with writing) and literacy cultures (those which have a writing system), looking at how the shift from an oral-based communication to one dominated by print changes the way we humans think and process information. "A deeper understanding of pristine or primary orality enables us better to understand the new world of writing" (78). Ong describes the functionally literate people as "beings whose thought processes do not grow out of simply natural powers as structured, directly or indirectly, by the technology of writing" (78). 

Profound changes in thought processes and in personality and social structures were brought about by the invention of writing and the transformation from one stage of consciousness to another: from oral cultures to literate ones.