We take it for granted but literacy changed everything. We could remember things precisely. Literacy allowed extension of thought into complex design. It is essential to philosophy, literature, science, engineering, and technology. Literacy is the platform of modern civilization, including the internet. We forget what it was like before literacy, when oral communication was the dominant mode of communication. Walter J. Ong’s Orality and Literacy is the second most illuminating book I have read about human consciousness.

Excerpt from my review at http://bookfrag.com/orality-and-liter...