Marshall Mcluhan had this
paranoid idea that man (
sic) had
ascended from
oral societies to
literate societies and was in the last part of the 20th century, due to the influence of
cool electronic media,
descending into an oral mode once more.
He called the resulting de-evolved humans electronic retribalized man.
While he has a point, I think he missed it. :)
This is an example of the ubiquitous intellectual error described by the Pre/Trans fallacy.
He failed to understand that a pre-literate oral society must be qualitatively different from a post-literate oral society, for the simple reason that one has experience with literacy and the other does not.
Still, Mcluhan's insight is valuable. It makes us ask questions about what we are becoming and whether we're going to like it.