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And he was right. The recall people were capable of on prelitersts societies was astonishing.

Everyone got dumber but society benefited because recalling was harder than reading.

People think in binaries whether they realise it or not. The idea that something was lost or weakened when writing became the dominant means of encoding information for long term storage is a difficult idea for most people to grapple with.

It used to be normal to memorise hour long speeches in the ancient world. Today people struggle with 20 lines. You can make the case that nothing of value was lost, but something was definitely lost.

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