Ong's writing

"Literacy is imperious." This is what Ong said in the first place. Someone may believe that writing is essential to literacy, and Ong thinks that literacy is natural but in advance. "For without a deep understanding of the normal oral or oral-aural con-sciousness and noetic economy of humankind before writing came along, it is impossible to grasp what writing accomplished." "Without writing, the
literate mind would not and could not think as it does, not only when engaged in writing but even when it is composing its thoughts in oral form." The primary literacy candidate would visualize the written word, seeing it as a whole, and would have a lot of trouble keeping the focus solely on the word.