Theryn Fleming's Reviews > Orality and Literacy

Walter Ong's goal in Orality and Literacy is to discuss the differences between oral culture and literate culture without describing orality in terms of literacy (as is typical). He explains how memory, thought processes, and artistic creation operate differently for oral individuals than for literate individuals. Oral culture is aural rather than visual. Words are events/actions, not things. Oral culture values what literate culture does not. Ong's ideas are especially useful for explaining why users of text-based new media can have wildly different goals and expectations (depending on whether they approach the medium as an oral one or a written one).