For this, I conceive, Phaedrus, is the evil of writing, and herein it resembles painting. The creatures of the latter art stand before you as if they were alive, but if you ask them a question, they look very solemn and say not a word. And so it is with written discourses. You could fancy they speak as though they were possessed of sense, but if you wish to understand something they say, and question them about it, you find them ever repeating but one and the self-same story. Moreover, every discourse, once written, is tossed about from hand to hand, equally among those who understand it, and those for whom it is in nowise fitted; and it does not know to whom it ought, and to whom it ought not, to speak. And when misunderstood and unjustly attacked, it always needs its father to help it; for, unaided, it can neither retaliate, nor defend itself.
Contrary to what Plato thinks, writing is a mode of thinking. Of making a thought objective and tangible, and therefore possible to dissect, interrogate, remould.
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 