I’ve been running through Ong’s “Characteristics of Orally Based Thought and Expression”. This week, we’re moving out of characteristics into more heavier and grander Psychodynamics of Orality with…

Oral Memorization

To sum up, with an over simplification, Ong’s observation is that literary memorization is verbatim while oral memorization, although claimed verbatim, is more or less general ball park.

Your modern image of memorization might involve hunching over books and queue cards. Repeating phrases and trying to translate them into your mnemonic device of choice. The goal: precise repetition.

Those who’ve tried to memorize any Shakespeare might have that daunting feeling.

Ong focused in on poetry, plays, and sonnets – all things minstrel. An area that would have some of the oldest documents where a select few would try and store it, while also having a deep history of oral traditions.

He discovered that oral memorization, is unexpectedly different, while really good at mimicry it isn’t exact after all.

It’s close. It can even fudge complexity, but when broken down there are differences: word variations, name changes, passage alterations. And when looked at very closely the memorization breaks down more into patterns, no matter how complex. The keys to unlock were more like linguistic Lego to mix and match that could create long sonnet’s with complex rhyming structures almost infinitely.

At the heart of it, is an ability to memorize the general structure, or pattern. Like a joke you tell, so long as you make sure to get the punchline.

This form of memorization is not unlike nature in a way. Trees, shells, snowflakes, fingers – all are pretty close. Yet, when you break them down they aren’t exactly the same.

Literate Memorization

As literacy took hold, we started to offload memorization onto technology. Scrolls & books galore! This memory was more or less published. Memorization became our strong rigid ability to repeat like a printing press in our mind.

Our literary binary mind loved it. Letters, words and sentences in exact order and location with proper punctuation.

And then of course to store all of that, the literary mind does what a literary mind does, creates systems to store it.

Verse numbers, Dewey Decimal Systems, catalogues, and file folders to look it all up, reference and find. More systems, libraries and librarians to be custodians and assist.

Our “memory” started using physical space to assist. Example: Page 33, like about a third of the book in, and on the page it was the paragraph above that blue and pink graph.

And then came binary digitization. We continued to file things into millions of folders, suffixed with indicators of data types ( doc, xls, txt, exe ). Oh the folders!

Then the web came, and folders became so much more! Prefixed with protocols and domains with subdomains and even more suffixes; protocols and slashes and query strings! We offloaded more and more information and memory. And the systems became more an more complex.

Our memorization was a badge of time and effort. A reward for an exhaustive journey to capture it.

Current Memorization??

Then came the search engine.

This may be the single catalyst for the end of classic literate memorization. Memorization simplified and completely offloaded onto technology.

While librarians and search catalogues use to do the work, now a single text field was all that was needed.

Combine this with the smart phone, where this single field is available at all times anywhere you go… and well, off load away. Why store those silly little facts in your mind?

Then we didn’t even have to type anymore.

Now we can have even more complex discussions with AI.

All those complex literary systems wiped under the rug. They still exist in complex code and LLMs and algorithms on the hardware that runs it all, somewhere in the cloud.

But, in the end what did it do?

There is no memorization

With all that information we’ve offloaded now at your finger tips, there’s no need to really memorize anything. The only time you really need it is short term, i.e. you have a test coming up, or want to impress someone for a first date. But long term… purged.

There’s a million versions

As we’ve uploaded, the cost has become incredibly cheap. Anyone can post minor variations of anything online. And boy oh boy do they. Variations have become a game of whack-a-mole and cease and desist letters. Each one having it’s validity scrutinized and questioned… even called “fake”.

And all the while, searchable and usable. It’s a full time job knowing exactly what’s real. But you know which version you believe is, so go with it.

Precision is out the door

And just like that, we don’t need to know the little facts anymore. We can ball park it, and when we need that precision of memorization… look it up.

The only thing we really need to know is how to ask.

“Generative” Memorization

^{Ya – that’s a tongue-in-cheek heading for sure.}

So… Oral Memorization is about generalized patterns; about using systems to unlock and almost generate the facade of precise memorization. It’s close, and that was good enough.

And our current way of Memorization? It about generalized searches; about using technology to re-discover or download short term which gives the facade of precise memorization. It’ close, and that’s good enough.

Both of these are generative. The details don’t really matter and It’s all about the gist and the tools to get there.

---

A few extra notes

“But it is exact!”

Something I found kind of interesting that was skimmed over. Ong quickly noted that those using Oral Memorization swore up and down that they always performed something exactly the same every way. That there version was the same as everyone else’s. And yet, when in actuality it wasn’t.

Maybe this is because oral culture is coupled with an agonistic nature? Maybe it’s the loss of objectivity? Neither likely won’t admit fallibility. Maybe there’s something else…

But it is fascinating how there’s a strong ones belief in truth is.

The Literaty

This entire topic is about general patterns. In any pattern, there’s anomalies and outliers. I’ve always ball parked it to about 2% – though again, big give or take depending.

2% of any general group is expected to be high performers or low performers.

So in that belief- I don’t think everyone will be like this. There will always be those that are more skeptical, analytical, more driven by precision, able to memorize things in ways I don’t understand. The Cultural Development: It’s Cultural and Social Foundations study indicates it could be as high as 15%.

I jokingly call it The Literaty, ( emphasis on the “ah” – li·ter·ah·tee ). Though in my imagining of our aliterate ( oral ) future, will this group become more be secretive or stay public opposition to what’s happening in the world? I don’t know, after all this is all a theory.

Can I compare Ong’s characteristics of an oral culture with our modern world? If so, what does that mean?

This week…

Close to the human lifeworld

According to Ong, an oral culture “must conceptualize and verbalize all their knowledge with more or less reference to the human lifeworld, assimilating the alien, objective worlds to the more immediate, familiar interactions of human beings.”

That’s a long winded way of saying, if it’s not real, or more specifically, not real to me, I’m not going to get it.

Oral minds don’t like abstract.

Ong, then proceeds to look at a really old play/book called the Iliad and the many examples of using metaphors that involve physicality such as “draw on”, “gather upon”, “embark“, …. Where the narrator uses this linguistic devise to keep the audience mentally moving with the plot.

The physical language, is intended to keep an oral culture somewhat engaged.

Side note: Why the old book? Because the older the writing, the closer to primary orality the person who wrote may have been. It’s like asking your grandmother to tell you about the internet. While not exact, the language used or phrasing, would show mental patterns that proceeded it, or when it was truly foreign.

Ong’s ultimate point, is a oral mind abhors the abstract

This idea is supported in an interesting study Cultural Development: It’s Cultural and Social Foundations by A.R. Luria. Which found a rare primary oral culture and studied it’s transition into literacy.

There’s loads of examples in the study that support this idea. Mostly oral minds won’t infer and even refuse to categorize or theorize something they’ve never experienced. Even guessing what someone would think of an outcome was balked at.

On oral mind: “Sure I could theorize why someone wears a red hat, but what’s the point because I don’t know anyone who wears red hats.“

De-abstracting into our lifeworld

So how are we de-abstracting things and bringing them into out human lifeworld? I Immediately can come up with 3 things

YouTube how-to’s

Ong outlines that that this not-relevant-to-me-like thinking extends to to-do lists and how-to manuals. That they would make no sense without seeing or experiencing the actions for oneself.

I wasn’t so sure about that. But then I started thinking, when was the last time I “read” a how-to?

I can’t. My wife repeats those TikTok recipe video’s over and over when making something new.

Me, I had an opportunity to watch my family, and my brother, or from time to time the food network. I always imagine myself as the them. Watching their hands move or techniques to stir and flip. Like I am their apprentice with them, watching.

The only thing I read is the ingredients and rough timelines in between. Oh the scrolling and scrolling I skim on these blogs that hide the actual recipe miles and miles down on the post.

Is this that oral mind kicking in? Or the aliterate one… stop the prose for the love of all things!

Resume’s and the Interview

Those who know me, know I’m in a transition period of my life. But what jumped out to me related to this is …

The resume is an abstract representation of my work life.

So how do businesses convert that abstract to life? How do they cut the abstract?

More specifics – I’ve found over the years the need for more and more specificity, more concrete proof of knowledge with specific metrics to “let us draw upon” experience.

More interviews. – It used to be one maybe at most three, but it’s looking like that number is increasing and they are getting harder and longer. If you pass the resume, then everyone related to your new job, needs to feel buy in and comfort and the only real way, is to bring you into their lifeworld. Which of course means… more interviews.

The real-ification of Disney

Disney is on a big push to make “real” all of their classics. The driver of this could be the economics, or the copyrights, or a million other reasons. At the end they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t resonating with their audience. Any why is it resonating?

Cartoons aren’t real. They are abstractions of the human lifeworld. The older the cartoon, the more abstract. Newer computer animation have at least some basis on real world physics, older hand drawn animation are more interpretative movements.

And it’s now not just Disney, my kids are super excited to see the real-ification of How To Train A Dragon.

How this applies to my real world

I’m sure there’s other examples I’ll think of over time.

But to end this little exploration off, is to bring it all back to what it means for us. News.

News contains a bunch of things that aren’t in my world: cities and streets I’ve never been to; cultures and people I don’t know about; food I’ve never heard of or tasted; situations I would never in a million years see myself in.

If my oral brain were to be exposed of to any news that isn’t in my human lifeworld, I wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t stick. I may even think it’s fake.

---

Wait… have you seen “Italian Brainrot”?

It was Marshal McLuhan’s birthday recently, and in homage, I’m looking at a strange “meme” or art form my kids love. McLuhan referred to art as a DEW…

Distant Early Warning system, that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it

And Italian Brainrot has to be a distant early warning; a commentary on what is and what isn’t in our human lifeword, pushed to an extreme.

It’s this strange mashup of reality. A generative AI interpretation of what could really happen if you take two random things to combine them: A ballerina and a cappuccino, a shark and Nike sneakers, a monkey with a banana body. The list goes on – have fun searching up all the characters, I know my mind was a little blown, and still is a bit by this one.

…I’ve kinda given away the ending.

But let’s rewind.

Next up in my ever continuing exploration of Ong and Oral Culture

Conservative or traditionalist

It’s fair to say oral cultures moves slowly. Things were moving at a pretty chill pace until that good old day in 1450 when Gutenberg turned on the press.

Ong says it’s all because of mental load. An oral culture doesn’t have room for new things. It takes a long time for new things to stick. Without the written word to do the repeating, new idea’s must be all word of mount, and repeated at nauseam.

An oral mind relies heavily on patterns and repetition. On sticking with the old things because the new things hurt.

“Oral cultures do not lack originality of their own kind”

When I first read that, I thought maybe his literate bias was showing. I’ve said if before, Ong does a very good job at staying unbiased towards orality in his Orality and Literacy. Maybe it was faltering a bit here.

Ong is also very delicate in his use of words. He didn’t say “oral cultures do not lack originality”, he says, “… originality of their own kind.”

Some technology seems to come out of nowhere. You think… holy smokes where did this come from: ovens, fridges, cars, planes, computers, quantum computers.

Maybe the type of originality of an oral culture is through variations on a theme; slowly changed over time until the invention or “new” thing seems inevitable.

Scissors – take two swords and connect them so they cut up and down at the same time.

The sandwich – We have meat. We have bread. Why aren’t they together?

Where have the new things gone?

And we’re back to the “same same but different”

Music, fashion, movies, are all feeling like a repetitive loop of what’s come before. The Spaceballs 2 teaser I posted previously echos this sentiment.

Do you think cars are all ending up looking the same?

Logo’s all look the same?

Websites all feeling the same?

Maybe it’s because our collective oral mind. We’re loosing the cognitive load to take something too different.

The million user test

But, look how fast we signed up for ChatGPT or Threads!

Ong points out,

In oral tradition, there will be as many minor variations of a myth as there are repetitions of it, and the number of repetitions can be increased indefinitely

Is ChatGPT really much different than ICQ? Is Netflix so far off from TV? When twitter came out, was it so foreign? You used to send it text messages.

I don’t think it’s that we won’t all flock to the latest “thing”. I just question our future appetite for true novelty. Newer is ok. Newest if fine. New New? I’m feeling doubtful.