Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 318
The record needs a consequence
The Consequences of Literacy shifts attention from documentation itself to the operations, access, and institutional power that durable inscription creates
Premise
Writing does more than preserve speech. Once discourse can survive outside the speaker, it can be compared across time, accumulated, reordered, criticized, transported, classified, and inspected by people who were not present when it was produced. Goody and Watt’s thesis asks what those communicative affordances change in social life.
For executives, the useful distinction is between externalizing memory and creating understanding. A written policy, log, transcript, or knowledge base can make evidence persistent without making it meaningful, trusted, or actionable. The design question is what operations the record enables, who may perform them, and what happens when the record reveals a discrepancy.
What the model is: The Consequences of Literacy in Knowledge →
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- The essential model
- 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.
- KnowledgeThe Consequences of Literacy