Walter Ong1[Author of Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word] believed that societies without writing are ‘agonistically programmed’, that is they have an inherent bias towards confrontation. This makes sense. Reading an essay written by your hated enemy is – however irritating their writing style and however intolerably pretentious their use of semicolons – usually a less intense emotional experience than confronting them face to face or watching them on screen. In her book about television and democracy, In-Your-Face Politics, the political scientist Diana Mutz describes her mother-in-law’s reaction to seeing the then US president George W. Bush on the television: ‘As she walked into the room, she turned her head away from the television in disgust. “Aach!” she exclaimed, “I can’t bear to have that man in my face. It makes me sick to my stomach!” We’re used to the idea that people shout at the television. But we tend not to shout at the books we are reading.
The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society
No wonder our politics has been so polarising.