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I personally think Mcluhun should be required listening for anyone in the 21st century interested in reading and writing. He comments on the effects of a society switching from mainly literate information to mainly auditory, and vice versa. So for instance, when the Ancient Greeks shift from mainly auditory, bardic stories to written stories, they invent philosophy and the ideas of the realm of the forms. He also argues that the linear reading of text in the west (left to right) creates ordered, linear thoughts whereas  auditory information has the opposite effect of making thoughts unstructured as it does not have a linear, left to right structure. His prediction for our modern age is one of stasis, or cycles. And that's the thing I've noticed about the last decade: everyone's having the same, endless arguments about the same topics. The same politicians with the same reactions  It's gotten to the point where I don't even take a side in these things any more because everything seems completely pointless. I don't think anyone even notices what they're doing, I certainly didn't when I was in that miserable vortex, and I hope people at least find something interesting here. 

Here's a good introductory video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0pcoC2l7ToI&pp=ygUQbWFyc2hhbGwgbWNsdWhhbg%3D%3D

Probably wise, I used to listen to podcasts and things like that all the time. I've completely kicked the habit now thanks to all this.  

I think you can get his book "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" for free online, and there have been a few articles written too. He has many, many more thoughts about this topic. But when you start to realise this, you begin to see these cycles cropping up in the most suspicious places. The early Greek Myths are full of cyclical punishments (Ixion, Sisphyus), and sometime after Fredrich Neiszche decides to attack the concept of reading, he comes up with his "eternal recurrance" concept. 

I suspect Tolkien was at least partially aware of this considering his poem "Mythopoeia" states: "I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name."

Frodo and Sam's thoughts: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zxMvva0ZSyA

"Hey, Paul!" *swings ax* "Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now, you fucking stupid bastard!"

That's not really true though, is it? Greece during its classical period was still largely illiterate, as was the whole world. Written philosophy was essentially an elite phenomenon limited to a cosmopolitan few. Oral transmission of stories was still how they were generally preserved: even in Greek prose, you will see that idea. The Socratic dialogue Ion is a prime example: in it, Socrates is hanging out with this guy named Ion of Ephesus, who is beloved for his skilled recitation of Homer.

In fact, I would say that  on a societal level, information's primary transmission was through word of mouth. The vast majority of people were illiterate up until very recently. A medieval serf would encounter the Bible as stories and images, not as text. 

Also, I disagree with the premise that a language's direction of script influences your thought: that seems arbitrary. Especially because, as I said, most people did not think about script at all. Egyptian hieroglyphs were generally written right to left, but occasionally reversed or written vertically: does that mean they had an unusually flexible view of reality compared to the Phoenicians? 

It gets rather more complex, since McLuhun points out that writing allows you to do a lot of very different things that yoi can't do with auditory information. You can lay informaton out in tables, you can see how long the paragraph you're reading is. And I'm quite sure that a medieval serf would see the world in a completely different way to a 19th century writer. But that same serf, who's now living in a world with literacy, would see things completely different to how a pre-literate society. 

He also points out how reading influences thoughts of individuality vs togetherness. Reading a story makes you a private person. Listening to/telling a story out loud means you're sharing it with everyone else. It's the same information, but the way that its transmitted changes how it's interpreted.

In a modern context earphones and headphones complicates this last point, but the idea that the medium has absolutely no serious impact on thoughts seems more improbable the more I think about it.

In thinking about this and looking it up, I got interested in whether this had any relation to Euclidian geometry, considering that seems to be an ordered concept, and he has this to say about it "Euclid was one of the first defects of the alphabet. That is, when you pull ouy everything except the figure, all the attributes of space and time are pulled out except certain abstract features. Euclid could not have happened without the alphabet."

So it seems both of us are thinking along the same lines here. Which, incidentally, you can't do with acoustic media. Becasue there are no lines with which to think across.

It's casual expressions and phrases like that which I've suddenly become very conscious of all of a sudden.