Walter Ong

Author of Orality and Literacy, reviewed in Orality and Literacy Book Review, which examines how the medium of communication (voice, writing, print, internet) reshapes how humans think, behave, and remember. Ong’s central claim, quoted in the review: “Writing… was and is the most momentous of all human technological inventions… it transforms speech and thought as well.”

Context: Walter J. Ong (1912–2003) was an American Jesuit priest, English professor, and cultural historian, best known for his work on the shift from oral to literate cultures and its cognitive consequences.

Where this appears

• Orality and Literacy Book Review — the subject author whose thesis on media and cognition the review distills.