"Writing is a technology..." and "Introduction"

Summarize
"Writing is a technology that restructures thought" -- Walter Ong

1. Noting that high-technology cultures such as are tend to believe literacy is a skill dealing with handwriting (chirography) and printing (typography), Ong provides a more layered understanding of print and oral literacy. His understanding is located in cognition: writing as a thinking process. He writes that with such a layered understanding we can understand those who can read and write as "beings whose thought processes do not grow out of simply natural powers but out of these powers are structured, directly or indirectly, by the technology of writing" (294). So per Ong, writing creates a way of thinking, and that way of thinking is more developed than those who live in oral cultures.
2. Ong traces an alarmist tendency in the history of writing. At the advent of the written word, Plato was concerned that writing would make literacy and meaning-making passive activities, because writing diminishes the need for memory and the status of philosophical dialogue as a primary method of meaning making. And at the advent of publishing, Squarciafico was concerned that an abundance of books would democratize knowledge in ways that challenged the need for an expert.
3. Ong makes the case that the printed word -- a text -- is dead, because writing removes thought from "the human life world" (300). However, Ong does not consider this a bad thing, because it offers a distance from the immediate moment that provides opportunity for abstract thought and objectivity (307). He also calls this a separation between the known and the knower (306), between data and the interpretation of data (308), between a message and its context (308), between administration and other social activities (309), between learning and wisdom (310).

"Introduction" -- Charles Bazerman and David Russell

1. Russell and Bazerman discuss writing through a theory -- Activity Theory. Based on this theory, writing (the act and the object) and reading (reception and interpretation) are one kind of tool that people use to act in the world, to do "knowledge work."

Comment
I want to highlight a couple of differences here. Bazerman and Russell and Ong have contrasting views of writing. B&R imagine writing as a living thing, a tool that helps people work in the world, and for them, writing is always tied to its situations: economic contexts, social contexts, educational contexts, etc. Ong has almost the opposite view. For him, writing is dead. The difference here is that Ong has a hierarchical view of writing; for him, there is a difference between high and low style, administrative work and social work, etc. Bazerman and Russell have a more flattened view of writing. For them, writing is knowledge work, and knowledge work is knowledge work regardless of its status (administrative or otherwise). I also want to point out a difference in terminology. For Ong, writing is a technology. And for B&R, writing is a tool. B&R's theory situates writing among many different kinds of social tools: speech and images to name two. But for Ong, writing is a technology that exists in a constellation of other writing technologies: the printing press and the machine.


Question
What difference does seeing writing as a tool or writing as a technology make when considering, for example, the status and function of newer writing technologies like mobile applications?