It is now a common complaint that the electronic media have corroded the intellectual skills required and fostered by the literary media  But several centuries ago the complaint was that certain intellectual skills, such as the powerful memory and extemporaneous eloquence that were intrinsic to oral culture, were being destroyed by the spread of literacy
So, what awaits us is probably a mere alteration of the human mind rather than its devolution
an illustration of the general hypothesis being advanced that intellectual abilities are inseparable from the means by which people communicate