From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman:
People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people – a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?
I encourage everyone to go out and read this book. It is brilliant. Postman references Huxley, Orwell, McLuhan, Socrates, and a vast range of other compelling thinkers. If you’re interested in how communication has changed over the years and throughout different societies, and how today’s “news” is often just another form of entertainment, then you will certainly get a great deal from this book. I was captivated within the first few pages.