Doing things for over 40 year; 20+ of those on the web. Now federated @nick@whoisnick.com
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The Master & The Apprentice
Old world relationships & social structures When I originally set out thinking about the social implications of orality and the postliterate world, I immediately imagined a series of old-world relationships. Ones that still exist today, though maybe overlooked or under-utilized, or ones that may have been forgotten or no longer seemed “relevant.” Here’s an example:…
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The Literaty
Literacy will always have a place Between the years 550 and 700, something interesting happened. With the fall of Rome, we stopped speaking and using Latin. What’s more, languages shifted and mutated in various parts of the world and by 700 the common person couldn’t speak it, nor did they have anyone in their lives that had…
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And on and on and on…
A characteristic of oral culture It’s time for the next review of one of Ong’s characteristics of an Oral culture. Additive rather than subordinative At the heart of it, Oral cultures avoid subordinate thought. There is no real order per se but a series of “and”s. Joe went to sleep. And Joe plowed his field. And Joe drank a…
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Homeostatic
Same, same but different? More of Ong’s characteristics of an oral society. “[O]ral societies live very much in a present which keeps itself in equilibrium or homeostasis by sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance.” Have you wondered why it’s taken humanity so long to progress? Unless it has a practical function, most oral people…
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Once a rock always a rock?
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it never was. In the world of ecology, things are never the same, only evolving. In my intro to this project, I talked about the story of the wolves of Yosemite. 14 wolves had amazingly positive results, but is Yosemite’s ecology the exact same as it was before everything when south? No. It can…