Writing establishes what has been called ‘context-free’ language . . . or ‘autonomous’ discourse . . . which cannot be directly questioned or contested as oral speech can be because written discourse has been detached from its author (77).
Texts are inherently contumacious (78).
Once the word is technologize, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest technology available (79).
intelligence is relentlessly reflexive, so that even the external tools that it uses to implement its workings become ‘internalized’ (80).
the deadness of the text, its removal from the living human lifeworld, its rigid visual fixity, assures its endurance and its potential for being resurrected into limitless living contexts by a potentially infinite number of living readers (80).
Writing . . . initiated what print and computers only continue, the reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space (81).
writing is completely artificial (81).
The process of putting spoken language into writing is governed by consciously contrived, articulable rules (81).
Technologies are not mere exterior aids but also interior transformations of consciousness (81).
Writing heightens consciousness (81).
Writing is an . . . interiorized technology (82).