The Word and the Person

Today I heard an interesting idea involving orality verses literacy. The speaker said that someone who chooses to write down their thoughts (i.e. an author) often has their personality forgotten or largely ignored while his or her writing is examined while someone who only speaks their thoughts (the oral poet) is remembered for their personality as well as their ideas. The examples given were Socrates and Plato. Much more is know of Socrates' personality than of Plato's.

On a side note, one more invented alphabet come mind this morning, that was writen by Sequoyah (often spelled Sequioa [the shortest word to contain all vowels]) for the Cherokee people in the 1800's.