Writing Is a Technology

Ong discusses how Plato's arguement against writing is similar to the argument that many people today use against computers. Many think manufactured technologies "weaken the mind" (79). He continues to discuss that similar arguments were presented against print technology. Supposedly, the abundance of printed materials destroys memory and causes feeblemindedness because it reduces the mind's work (79).

Ong suggests that Plato's position was made weak because he put his argument in writing "to make his objections effective" (79). The anti-print supporters, to strengthen their argument, "put their objections in print." Writing is a technology that requires the use of tools and other equipment. "Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it" (Ong 83). 

Writing is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind.