"Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought"

Walter J. Ong writes about how literacy tends to begin to take on the form of supreme power by simply attaching to itself [literacy] the human expression and thought. Ong has argued that the term "illiterate" suggests that people belong to the class of deviants, based on the simple fact that they lack something most others have gained, literacy. Deviants in regards to normative/normal world tend to be thought of as a group comprised of individuals lacking a simple mechanical skill.

The quote that stuck out to me was when Plato Socrates explains that "writing destroys the memory" (page 21, Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought, By Walter J. Ong). Socrates goes on to explain that though the use of external sources (e.g. computers, calculator, etc.) individuals have failed to rely heavily on their internal resources. This simple fact proved that writing has weakened the mind. Showing that we have become slave to the machine in society. We no longer find it necessary to stimulate and expand or internal resources (the mind) because so much emphasis now has been placed on the fact that machines have taken over and reduced the human ability to want to think. Machines, I believe take the drive, energy, and ambition away making the mind become complacent.

The critical term that is essential to the text is the word simply put "writing" (page 19, Writing is a technology that Restructures Thought", By Walter J. Ong). This term appears at various points throughout the text in how writing is compared to a mechanical skill, like tying a shoelace that one must master in order to become fully literate. Writing can take on many forms, existences, feelings such as inhuman, artificial, or a manufactured product. In this essay Ong places a huge emphasis on how writing has changed and will change the human mind either for the bad or good of society.

Overall, Ong described that writing and literacy are somewhat co-related relying on the fact that writing has become an essential tool to the human mind residing in the fact that it contributes to a richer, fuller, interior, human potentials. Ong discusses some critical elements that writing causes separation. Separation has begun to reveal itself as a divider of all sorts of things at all sorts of levels.

Finally, Ong compares writing to the everyday computer comparing it to the fact that writing is self-corrective to a certain degree. Print and electronics have started to separate know er from known more then writing does. Print has the effect on the human mind by placing a strain on the know er and known stages of writing in the context of complex structures of material. Writing has become a double-edged sword to some degrees it can benefit certain people however it can also hinder other people while at the same time taking on new shapes and forms throughout it's usage.