Changing the Way We Communicate, Part I of II

摘要

In the period between grunting and the broad adoption of writing, man's communication was based on speech. The ability to write down thoughts, ideas and instructions fundamentally changed the way man communicates. Writing brought with it precision and the ability to span time and space in ways oral traditions cannot. L. Gordon Crovitz, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes that Aristotle was the first to explain that how we communicate changes what we communicate. Mr. Crovitz goes on to contemplate whether Amazon's Kindle eBook reader and its peers may presage a tectonic shift in how we communicate because books require a strict organization that digital media does not. As a business strategist, I get paid to think and communicate, so changes in how we communicate interest me greatly.