McLuhan described the three stages of human communication as: first, the pre-literate tribal stage of hearing and speaking; then the invention of the alphabet culminating in the Gutenberg printing revolution of the fifteenth century when reading and seeing moved communication from the tribal context to the individual. Thirdly, has come the electronic stage in which there has been a retribalising as the spoken word has been eclipsed by the visual -- the age of the image.

In Orality and Literacy; The Technologizing of the Word Walter Ong called these three eras Primary Orality, Literacy and Secondary Orality (This paper draws its title from this book.). Primary orality, describes those who were totally unfamiliar with writing. Its words had distinctive psychodynamics as "sounds" from within a person's "interior consciousness." Sounded words were events. Hence, the Hebrew word dabar means both word and event. For communication to be effective, the process of recall was essential with a need to "think memorable thoughts." All kinds of techniques were required such as mnemonics, rhythms, repetitions, formulae, and the "stitching together" of stories. Because words were sounds, the ear was primary. Orality meant aurality.

The invention of writing initiated literacy as the second period of communication. Ong claimed that "more than any other single invention writing has transformed human consciousness." Writing actually restructured consciousness. Whereas oral speech welled up out of the unconsciousness, writing led to artificial context free language. The invention of writing was itself a technology which in turn gave birth to the technologies of printing and electronics.

Writing has become so indispensable it is hard to imagine how profound was its first impact on the ways that human beings think and express themselves. Words became precise 'things' which could be recorded in indexes, dictionaries and other lists. Science became possible through exact verbalization. For literacy it was the eye that was primary instead of the ear.

The third period of communication was in its infancy when Ong wrote his book. Less than three pages are given to the electronics revolution which he famously called secondary orality. However, his analysis was acute. "The electronic transformation of verbal expression has both deepened the commitment of the word to space initiated by writing and intensified by print and has brought consciousness to a new age of secondary orality." Comparing secondary orality with primary orality, Ong stressed that secondary orality is "both remarkably like and remarkably unlike primary orality" (135).

"Like primary orality, secondary orality has generated a strong group sense, for listening to spoken words forms hearers into a group, a true audience, just as reading written or printed texts turns individuals in on themselves. But secondary orality generates a sense for groups immeasurably larger than those of primary oral culture -- McLuhan's 'global village' ... we are group minded self-consciously and programmatically" (136).