#aliterate

Don’t get it. Won’t get it.

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# , ,

With what’s happened this week in the US, I’m going to focus in on the next characteristic of an oral culture that I think fits the bill. While moments like these have many more moving parts and are much more complex, perhaps there’s something in this one that might be relevant.

I’ve talked about this before, but let’s use it in terms of Ong this time. In his characteristics of an oral cultures he calls this:

Situational rather than abstract.

Oral cultures tend to use concepts in situational, operational frame of reference that are minimally abstract in the sense that they remain close to the human lifeworld

In other words, abstract generalisations go out the window. Inference and logic are illogical. An oral mind will stay rooted in the here and now and won’t even entertain the idea abstraction.

What’s in front of them is the truth. Only what they’ve experienced is the truth. Trying to understand someone or something else is impossible and any exercise to go deeper is irrelevant.

I won’t group like you tell me

In Cognitive Development, It’s Cultural and Social Foundations by A.R. Luria, a fascinating read, they were able to study a pocket of preliterate society as it transitioned into literacy. They asked a lot of interesting questions to see what how they would answer.

Here’s one small example, Ong, outlined. When asking the participants to name shapes, they never used the general name of the shape, instead:

  • Circle were plates, sieves, moons
  • Triangles were amulets, fingernails, buckets
  • Squares were mirrors, doors, apricot drying boards

This study continues to ask them to group even more things: people, situations, trees – and time after time, they refused.

Here’s another test performed. Give someone 4 items ( pictures of the items ), and have them take one away based on any defined grouping

You try:

  • hammer – saw – log – hatchet
  • glass – saucepan – spectacles – bottle
  • bayonet – rifle – sword – knife

But what happened in the majority of cases, preliterate people didn’t, and wouldn’t, group these things with attributes, but by situation. And, they would either deffer, reject, or expand the situation to not exclude anything. Here’s an example of someone, given glass-saucepan-spectacles-bottle, who almost got there:

These three go together, but why you’ve put the spectacles here, I don’t know. Then again, they also fit in. If a person doesn’t see too good, he has to put them on to eat dinner

It wasn’t like they wouldn’t do the exercise, but something was in their mental process was blocking them; they couldn’t do the exercise.

It might then be no surprise what happens when you expand grouping to inferring.

Here’s a very, very simple inference.

If Bobs steals, and stealing is bad, Bob is bad.

To the literate mind, that logic tracks. However, an oral mind will buck up against the whole premise. An oral mind, like asking to group items, won’t even play along. It might even fight you saying “I don’t really know Bob, how can I judge?”

So what does all this have to do with what happened in the US?

Voting.

Voting requires ones ability to infer a candidate is good or bad. Voting requires the ability to create generalisations about someone, their behaviour, their history, their beliefs, to determine if the politician or party would serve your best interest in the future.

If someone looses the ability to make abstractions and generalisations, what happens?

Photo by Soraya Irving on Unsplash

You know what you can recall

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# , ,

Where was I in reviewing Ong’s characteristics of an Oral culture? I can’t recall.

A little searching ( clickity clickity )… here it is.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

For the most part, as you may have guessed, I’ve been arguing that we are returning to a mostly oral culture by saying we have the most of the characteristics. However, this is one where it doesn’t fully lock in for me yet; where technology and aliterate may divert, or perhaps still getting there. I’m going to try and further my stance that we are moving towards an oral society. But there are some big gaps here – it’s a work in progress; close, but maybe not close enough? You be the judge.

You know what you can recall: Mnemonics and Formulas

In an oral culture complex thoughts are tied to mnemonic trickery: trinkets and patterns, lyrics and rhymes; dances and body movements; sights and sounds; metaphors and stories. All those little rhymes your grandmother knows had a purpose.

In literate culture, technology offloads that knowledge into some device: a stone tablet, a book, a website. We don’t need any Mnemonics when we can now open a browser to, say “Hey Siri…” Perhaps the formula is knowing the right search terms? But that’s a very very loose argument.

Mnemonic or a Meme?

The whole point of a mnemonic device is to unravel a memory or knowledge. To use the device and share it with others to help them remember. It could be something simple and concrete: Never Eat Shredded Wheat ( North, East, South, West ), or Roy G. Biv ( a colourful dude playing piano on a rainbow ).

While perhaps they aren’t traditional mnemonics, we do have memes. Oh boy, do we have meme’s! You’ve seen them, understood them, or perhaps misunderstood them for a while now. “One does not simply” need a picture to understand. Also one does not simply need words either

Perhaps we’ve extended traditional mnemonics more than Ong could have imagined? We now have included a wealth of mediums, contexts and sub-context.

Original mnemonics require training, and shared background to unpack. Meme’s are no different. See how many unlock shared knowledge for you?

  • New phone, who ‘dis?
  • Keep calm and …
  • Netflix and chill
  • Yada yada
  • Bye, Felicia

Now, most meme’s are intended to provoke humor. Some might find them more social commentary, debating their use. Do meme’s help us remember quantum mechanics?

Outside of the Mnemonic/Meme, there was another passage in Ong’s explanation specifically about mnemonic training:

[An] interlocutor is virtually essential: it is hard to talk to yourself for hours on end. Sustained thought in an oral culture is tied to communication.

A What now? Interlocutor.

“Can you say that in a sentence?”

“So Eugene already had a leg up—an interlocutor could explain away any failed communication.”

  • a person who takes part in a conversation or dialogue.
  • a person who questions; interrogator.

So, with AI, we create a technological interlocutor. Needing to have a dialogue with a computer to retain knowledge. A single question in Google is no longer enough. Keywords are no longer enough. We are starting to need a conversation; dialogue, no matter how light or fallible it is right now, to retrieve knowledge.

How often do you ask Siri or use Copilot instead of a “classic” search?

Shaka, when the walls fell

I can’t go down this mental rabbit whole without making reference one particular episode of Star Trek. Whether you are a trekkie or not, there is one episode perfect for a communications geek like me, Damok. Which introduced the Tamarians, who speak only in metaphors and allegories.

Feel free to go down the wikihole, I have several times, and will likely again after I hit publish on this post. What I noticed immediately, was the almost visceral reaction to the oral nature of the thought experiment.

How could an oral society have advanced technology?

And that.. that right there, that sentiment, is what I believe to be the future catalyst for so much trouble.

Proficiently Literate?

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# , ,

There’s literate and then there’s proficiently literate. This whole idea that we are tipping into the postliterate relies on the idea that we are all literate; just don’t seem to care; prefer other oral based media.

So are we?

Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

Into Literacy

For the purposes of my little thought experiment, let’s use 50% of a population as a tipping point: greater, even by 0.1% is a sway to literate sensibilities, lower oral.

We’ll start at roughly 1450 AD, when Gutenberg invented the mechanical printing press. Since then, like flat screen TVs, the cost of the printed word has scaled down to the point that any class has the means to obtain it.

Here’s the timeline from what happened then ( +/- a few years ).

  • 1650, UK & Netherlands have roughly 50% literacy
  • 1750, Sweden reached 50%
  • 1850, France
  • 1850, the Americas start with 80% literacy rates
  • 1900, Italy was shy of 60%
  • 1900, the Netherlands  (90%) and America (89%) had the highest literacy rates in the world
  • 1960’s, finally the world literacy rate hit 50%

Literacy rates in the world stay strong. We could do better, but we tipped the numbers, from 12% who could read to 14% who can’t.

Into Post Literacy

The world is literate, but how well is it literate? To understand quality, we’ll use PIAAC Proficiency Levels. It’s a scale from 0-500.

  • < Level 1 (0-175) – Basic vocabulary. Little to no understanding of sentence of paragraph structure.
  • Level 1 (176 – 225) – Short, non-continuous texts. Ability to add basic personal information in documents.
  • Level 2 (226 – 275) – Medium length, continuous, non-continuous, or mixed textx. Can paraphrase. Low-level inferences.
  • Level 3 (276 – 325) – Dense or lengthy, continuous, non-continuous, mixed, or multi- page texts. Can construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses.
  • Level 4 (326 – 375) – Integrate, interpret, or synthesize multi-page complex texts. Identify and understand non-central idea(s). Interpret or Evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse.
  • Level 5 (376 – 500) – Integrate information across similar and contrasting ideas or points of view. Aware of subtle, rhetorical cues and to make high-level inferences.

So where does the world stand? The national average is 267 (level 2).

  • 296, Japan
  • 288, Finland
  • 270, US
  • 250, Italy

Now here’s something I think merits closer attention. Let’s look at the US. A country that started as a world leader in literacy. And, let’s bring out that 50% measuring stick again.

In 2012/14 50% were Level 3 (>275). In 2017 they lost 2 points. Now 52% are level 2.

Does this mean there is a downward trend? Is their proficiency continuing to drop? Still unknown.

Canada, US & Australia haven’t been keeping up on sharing literacy rates or PIAAC data, if they even have any. So it’s hard to know for sure at the moment.

Here’s a Canadian report back to 2012 that shows how low proficiency levels are then (note: this report used quartiles to divide the PIAAC levels into grades)

US on, are greater than 50%

My Take: Aliterate oral culture is back

Here’s my theory. When Literacy Rates are high but < 50% are proficient, you’ve got fertile soil for aliterate oral culture.

My personal feeling, is like autism and other spectrums aliteracy and oral sensibilities can fluctuate. Just like you see in proficiency rates, some cultures are less and more aliterate than others. They may be swayed by oral discourse and rules. Perhaps this can be applied to any culture & sub-culture not just geographic?

For a small blip in our history, our technology required us to be proficient. To type commands, to program computers to do things. And in it we buried our oral nature in a pile of books, an accumulation of words greater in the past few years than the combined history of written words. And yet things are changing. Technology has passed the tipping point that our primal, oral nature is coming back.

Sources:

Non binary

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# , ,

Orality is fluid; so are we.

Last week I introduced Walter J. Ong and my first comparison with his characteristics of oral cultures. The power in the choice of a pronoun.

And this leads me to a perception of what could be a characteristic of a literate culture

Binary thought

McLuhan, Postman, Ong, and I’m sure others, have looked at the ecology of the written word and quickly seen its influence on our logical nature. It’s not a far leap to see how literacy and math, science, law progressed together.

Yet in this ability, is a simple mental foundation. Until recently our technological mountain has been composed of this smallest foundation. True (1) and false (0). On (1) and off(0). Is (1) and isn’t (0).

After all – a word is or isn’t printed on a page. It is or isn’t in paragraph 3 subsection 4. It was or was not successfully reproduced. 1+1 is or is not 2.

We tend to think lately that our capacity and attention has whittled down to almost nothing. It might be true. Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death shows us the legal & political celebrity & prowess in the early days of the United States; their once staggering high literacy rates combined with the public’s ability to keep up with and even enjoy hours of complex debate & deliberation.

On the flip side of literacy, I recently read Cultural Development: It’s Cultural and Social Foundations by A.R. Luria, a fascinating opportunity to collect insight into a changing subculture as it transitions into literacy. And it shows cracks in human thought, that with Oral cultures, the fundamentals of logic changes. It’s not that there isn’t any, it’s just not the same.

Inference goes out the door.
Reasoning becomes cluttered with complexity.
Perception itself becomes void of classification.

Perhaps it’s not so Binary. Perhaps how we categorize, or logically organize our world is up for review.

And how interesting that now, as we delve into quantum computing we are opening our thoughts to “maybe”, “maybe not” and “maybe both.”

The diversity of a Roman

I think this picture is amazing. Look at it with me. A designer used AI and photoshop to give details back to the busts of Roman emperors

What I think is relevant to binary thought – are any preconceived notions of a Roman.

If our category, inference, definition, and judgment are based on a literate characteristic of binary thought, how we are trying to define life or imagine history might be as well.

Photo credit: Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Originally posted on Substack

Who’s Ong?

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# , ,

Walter J. Ong: Orality and Literacy

I’ve already introduced you to McLuhan. Now, let’s introduce you to another figure that’s currently shaping my perspectives. Walter J. Ong.

How he influence the conversation of “Orality”? His work is foundational. While I still have to get into his more history-based works, his main focus was in a small pocket of time in human history, the transition from Orality into Literacy. Hence one of his seminal works Orality and Literacy.

But, Nick, is this a religious thing?

Ah, you noticed what he was wearing in the picture did you? I did say that, didn’t I? While he may be an American Jesuit priest, at no time while reading Orality & Literacy did I ever get the sense of religion.

So sure, his specific curiosity may have been triggered by religion. I can only speculate it’s not a large hop skip and a jump to wonder if it was sparked around the effect missionary work had on an oral society. How at the heart of his religion was, in a sense, literacy. But that’s where we mostly stop.

Compassion of orality

I say mostly because with Ong, perhaps his religion helped, but nowhere yet in my readings, have I felt any portrait of superiority between literacy and orality.

Which seems against what I’ve found from my informal conversations. From my discussions, so far, when I even suggest a post-literate oral culture is emerging, I seem to hit this wall. “Well, I know how to read!”

Maybe?

Where I’m going is, that as we go on this ride, I do not want to suggest any sort of inferiority or superiority between literate and oral. They are merely different. And that difference changes our minds which in turn changes our perceptions of each other and the world we live in.

I realize now, my first post, may have been suggestive of this backslide, talking of tribal darkness. I think I might have to rectify that in future posts.

Back to it

Where were we… oh yes, what does Ong have to do with Orality… everything.

He coined the term “Secondary Orality” mainly orality steeped in literacy. TV & Movies start with a script. But somewhere it gets a little twisted and muddled when written feels spoken. It’s a fancy term you can use at a cocktail party when discussing slang, emojis, tweets ( micro-blogging ), memes, and other oral-like text.

But the main pièce de résistance is his characteristics ( psychodynamics ) of an oral culture. It’s a pillar in everything. While there is debate, he devised a series of traits in oral cultures. I’m not going to list all of them all right now because well… spoilers, however, if you really want, Wikipedia has a decent list.

What I will do, is leave you with a teaser of what I want to do throughout this project. What if we re-examine society today against the characteristics of an oral culture? What do you think we would find?

Here’s the first of many:

Sounded Word As Power and Action

The very first is a topic Ong tackles is an oral cultures association of words and power. Every Tolkien-like fantasy story has an elemental knowledge of this. Know someone’s “true” name, and have power over them. Or better yet, read The Name of the Wind, a good fantasy book if I do say so myself.

In the non-fictional world, for some traditions & cultures, it’s a source of deep connection. Used sparingly. A way to declare family, special relationships, or sacred moments.

Outside of these oral traditions, there has been a resurgence of re-appropriating words. Derogatory slang is taken back as empowerment.

Currently, one of the most powerful examples of a cultural rekindling that sounded word has power, and one I believe we’re “feeling” is a re-appropriation and a declaration, that of the pronoun.

Imagine the neuropathways in the human mind learning and changing.

How amazingly beautiful!

Originally posted on Substack

The dark side of McLuhan’s Tribal Man

⧖ 𝄋 Nick Kempinski§ Into the Postliterate# ,

Does the Global Village have a few dark alleys?

If you don’t know McLuhan’s theory, here’s my super-duper simplified a-little-too-much version of it:

Around 1964, McLuhan theorized that as technology advanced it would become a digital central nervous system of information connecting all media like our physical central nervous system connects our senses.

In this connectivity, mankind will revert back to an oral society, back to a time of Villages — but this time a Global Village. In turn, it would rekindle us back to a tribal-like life.

Now to break it down:

Yes, his central nervous system theory was a prediction of the Internet. Usually, the mic drops here, we stop.

But wait, there’s more.

His Global Village is happening everywhere. It’s in every craft beer you drink, every food truck you eat at, pop up shop you buy a bar of elderflower artisanal soap from; every digital nomad you meet; every tattoo and piercing; every lumber-sexual you see drinking an Old Fashioned variant with locally source gin or whisky.

What does an oral society have to do with all of that?

The underpinning of most of McLuhan’s theories is how we interacted with a medium is far more important than its content. It changes us by interacting with it. The radio dial and transistors; understanding that invisible waves can transmit voices through the air; using the theatre of the mind to pretend that the announcer is talking just to you. All of this is more important than how captivating the content is.

The medium is the message

How does media make lumber-sexuals? It’s the consequences of how your brain rewires itself slightly when interacting with a medium.

The dominant medium of choice can influence how your mind works, in essence, your thoughts.

Back to the Lumber-sexual thing.

Orality.

Yup – there’s that word again

Story Telling. Oral Traditions. Great grandmothers teaching grandmothers a recipe. Learning a childhood lesson through a bedtime fable. The sound of someone else’s voice as you remember what you’ve learned. It rings with a sense of history.

McLuhan referred to this oral time and the time of the Tribal Man. And like the term Tribal, a sense of history comes. The exploration of it — asking yourself, when Mom said she was drinking an “Old fashioned” what was that? When Dad was showing me a picture telling me about camping — what was up with the mustache and toque? How would I look with a mustache and toque?

And the exploration of history deepens:

  • How did my grandfather make moonshine?
  • My grandparents sold their own butter to make ends meet. How can I do that?
  • Every tattoo is a story to tell; a visual history of your life.

Sure — this isn’t the exact same. Our current Orality is driven more through digital channels, but it’s still word of mouth.

The craft and artisanal resurgence are nice and all, I’m a huge sucker for that scene, but with the latest wave of Xenophobic-like politics happening in the US & UK, I’ve started wondering, is Orality a part of it?

What are our darker tendencies when we are Tribal?

If you’ve traveled as I have, you have walked into a place you shouldn’t have been. All eyes staring up at you wondering who you were, asking themselves “What is this stranger doing in here? Don’t they know better?”

Now imagine going farther back in time. What happens to that situation in a more primitive world: Slavery. Salem witch hunts. North America’s genocidal colonization. Farther. Holy Wars. Dark Ages. Roman Conquest. Genghis Khan. Vikings. Farther.

Humanity has a history before the written word of being fiercely loyal and territorial, perhaps to a fault: racism, religious wars, family feuds escalated to extremes causing neighbours to kill. Our history is full of a darker side when anyone mentions “protecting our own.”

Oh did I bury the lead… McLuhan said so himself …

McManus: But it seems, Dr. McLuhan, that this tribal world is not friendly.

McLuhan: Oh no, tribal people, one of their main kinds of sport is butchering each other. It’s a full-time sport in tribal societies.

McManus: But I had some idea that as we got global and tribal we were going to try to — — 

McLuhan: The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There’s no evidence of that in any situation that we’ve ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each together….The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.

If you can get past that part and watch the rest – I think it will also help with where I’m going. Though – take out the old man complaining about the young wippersnappers.

Originally posted by me on Medium; then on Substack