Peter Tiersma, author of Parchment, Paper, Pixels; Law and the Technologies of Communication,( PDF)thinks it's possible:
[0]nline databases have started to include more and more judicial opinions, including many that in the past would not have been published and would therefore be relegated to obscurity. This practice has resulted in a massive increase in the case law that is available to lawyers. The only effective way to search through these databases is by means of an electronic search engine. Unlike a human being with legal training, who can peruse a judicial opinion for concepts or principles, current search engines can only locate strings of text. As a consequence, the digitizing of judicial opinions has the potential to make the common law more textual and, concomitantly, less conceptual. It may lose the flexibility it once had to be interpreted and reinterpreted to fit new and unforeseen situations.
Lest you think that this suggestion is too attenuated or fanciful, Tiersma reminds us of a broader context:
David Olson has suggested that the development of alphabetic writing systems gave Western civilization many of its defining features. According to an influential article by Jack Goody and Ian Watt, writing made it possible to begin distinguishing myth from history. It is therefore “not accidental that major steps in the development of what we now call "science‟ followed the introduction of major changes in the channels of communication in Babylonia (writing), in Ancient Greece (the alphabet), and in Western Europe (printing).”
Some scholars suggest that the development of writing, especially the phonetically based alphabet that arose in ancient Greece, has not merely influenced our civilization and culture in dramatic ways, but has fundamentally altered how people think. According to Eric Havelock, “Greek literacy changed not only the means of communication, but also the shape of the Greek consciousness.” In a similar vein, Walter Ong argued that the development of literacy fostered abstract thinking, categorization, and logical deduction.
