Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 354
Decisions need a memory beyond the room
Ong’s synthesis shows how speech, writing, print, and secondary orality distribute persistence, memory, revision, presence, and accountability differently
Premise
A communication channel changes more than speed or convenience. Spoken language vanishes as it is uttered; writing can persist, be indexed, quoted, revised, compared, and retrieved by people who never met the author. Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy makes those differences part of communication design rather than neutral delivery choices.
For executives, the useful question is therefore not simply which channel is best. It is what the work must remember, what must remain revisable, where immediate repair matters, and which decisions must survive the people who were present when they were made.
What the model is: Orality and Literacy in Knowledge →
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- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryTheories & Explanatory Models
- DomainMedia, Publics & Society
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Theories & Explanatory Models
Explains how or why a communication process works by relating mechanisms, conditions or variables. Its value is an account that can guide inquiry into what produces an outcome, rather than a name for the outcome alone.
- KnowledgeOrality and Literacy