substitute or supplement

Are you tired of discussions of whether new technologies substitute or supplement old technologies? I think Eric A. Havelock's moves beyond such a discussion in his beautiful book The Muse Learns to Write. He discusses how literacy, as it emerged with the Greek writing system, created the character of modern consciousness. Yet, it was not so that writing merely replaced or supplemented oral storytelling. Neither did the introduction of the radio represent a reversion to past oral times. No, these technological developments represent marriage and remarriage between the spoken word and the written. I've only reached page 33, looking forward to the rest. Havelock was 83 when he wrote the book.

(...) the epics as we know them are the result of some interlock between the oral and the literate; or to vary the metaphor, the acoustic flow of language contrived by echo to hold the attention of the ear has been reshuffled into visual patterns created by the thoughtful attention of the eye (page 13).

Wow, the art of writing .