Who is Nick?

Asking all my life.

#aliterate

  • FOMO, YOLO, and FOLO?

    Time has opened up for me; so has my ability to keep focusing on my exploration of Ong’s characteristics of an oral culture.

    Today’s target is

    Aggregative rather than analytic

    Linguistic Formulas

    “The elements of orally based thought and expression tend to not be so much simple integers as clusters of integers…” He goes on to explain it’s clusters & phrases. His examples are “not the soldier, but the brave soldier not the princess, but the beautify princess.”

    Oral cultures tend to be consistent in using consistent descriptive adjectives. Not simply saying a soldier or princess. This doesn’t exclude the opportunity for an alternate adjectives such as, his examples, “braggart soldier” or “unhappy princess” but the default position is this aggregate term and default aggregate repeated over and over until normalized.

    These might not really ring so true today in terms of simple descriptive adjectives. However when you expand the language to longer phrases, and acronyms, things start to become interesting.

    • YOLO – You only live once
    • FOMO – fear of missing out
    • MAGA – make america great again
    • GOAT – greatest of all time
    • BFF – best friends forever
    • LMAO – laugh my ass off
    • LOL – laugh our loud.
    • ROFL – roll on the floor laughing
    • PITA – pain in the ass
    • TMI – too much information
    • NSFW – not safe for work

    All of these can be used otherwise yet we don’t.

    I could reveal some thing intimate and use alternate words, but I don’t. I say TMI, keeping the phrase intact and crystalized.

    Each acronym or phrase cannot be altered. FOLO is not a thing.

    … rather than analytic

    Now comes the analytic part. For Ong, the argument was simply put that “Without a writing system, breaking up thought – that is, analysis – is a high risk process.” He then drops-the-mic with a quote from Levi-Stauss, “the savage [i.e. oral] mind totalizes.”

    Essentially he’s saying that oral thought cannot piece meal a concept. It can not look at something in isolation but must have context, inter-connection, situation, as a whole. Saying “a friend” would be like…

    It would be an unfinished sentence to an oral mind and require the formula and some form of aggregate language.

    Is that to say, if I say “best friend” would an oral mind place it in the default position and complete the phrase adding “forever”? If I were to mention “laughing” would there be mental chaos because someone isn’t sure if I’m doing it “out loud” or “rolling on the floor” from it?

    Perhaps the term itself is negated and ignored? Thinking, “they aren’t really friends because Nick never clarified it was best or forever.” Or, “He didn’t ‘literally’ laugh because he didn’t say it was out loud.”

    Maybe for the aliterate a little analysis is allowed? But perhaps not too much.

    Fediverse Reactions

  • We are deep in “it”

    Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

    Welcome back to the exploration of Ong’s characteristics of an Oral Culture. Today, We’re going to tackle…

    Empathetic and Participatory Rather than Objectively Distanced

    “For an oral culture learning or knowing mean achieving close, empathetic, communal identification with the known… Writing separates the knower from the known.”

    Meaning that literacy can give distance and objectivity to a topic, to a perspective, to a way of life.

    Reading a book ,the thoughts of someone else meld with our own. We get to wear their skin for a moment in our silence.

    Writing, is an externalization of thought. Seeing our words on paper or screen vents them from our interior creating a reflective mirror; a recording – it’s us, but not. Through it, we have the opportunity to be critical of ourselves, like a mirror that lets me be critical of some of my t-shirt choices.

    And as we delve into our oral nature… we remove these moments of distance.

    We entrench ourselves into thoughts and opinions. We build up walls and listen only to the songs we know, read only the things we already read.

    Does it feel like the world is being objective?

    I can tell you it doesn’t for me. If feels, to me, that people are hunkering into their camps and doubling down.

    We blame social media. That it has given us our rose coloured glasses. It force feeds us biased media & ads base on demographics, personas, geolocation and algorithms. It does so to the point where we don’t see anything outside of our little bubble.

    But… perhaps…

    Perhaps even if it did, would we choose to see/hear it? Aliterate means we can read ( a little ) and choose not to. We could learn about someone else yet, like reading, choose not to.

    Perhaps we are all losing our objectivity to even care?

    Debate requires objectivity. Debate requires some sense of distance from a topic to allow ourselves to be open.

    Instead, as Ong points out, as an oral culture we start to identify with the known. We become the perspective and anything else, becomes more and more foreign to us.

    The Actor

    Is the actor ( or performer ), the only one who has the capacity and the tools in an oral or aliterate culture to truly step in and out of someone else’s perspective? They have, or are working on the ability to empathize and identify with someone foreign. They walk, talk and even breath like someone else for a moment. The goods ones, in my opinion, push themselves further and further from themselves.

    Is that part of our collective fascination and admiration of them?

    I’m going to have to go off and ponder that like this for a few moments…

    AI photo prompt: “picture of someone, shadow only, dramatically thinking alone on a stage in front of an empty theater”

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Governance and Orality

    I’ve been digging into a thought for the past week starring out into the void wondering what to do next.

    With Decentralized/Federated Social Media, I’m seeing a lot of discussions on how do we want to run ourselves? Ethical, rights, power and other conversations all around and to do with Governance.

    Before I do continue, here’s something I use as my framework

    My Web Pyramid

    Like Maslow’s Pyramid, here’s how I picture the evolution of the web.

    Web 1 – Media (publishing)
    Web 2 – Communication* (2 way communication)
    Web 3 – Economies
    Web 4 – Governance
    Web 5 – Citizenship

    And like Maslow’s theory, these layers aren’t independent, and we are always in flux as we go up and down depending on social need.

    * Update: I previously have called Web 2 “Community”, but I’m rejigging that thought a bit.

    Decentralized?

    Could this pyramid be more about a decentralized, autonomous, or independent web? Could this be about scale and accessibility? 🤷

    Not just the ability to publish, but at an economical scale that it’s easy and cheap for one to publish. Just like it’s easy to discuss, or now… make your own digital currency.

    The structures of Governance

    I’ve started investigating several types of governance. Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Coops/Unions/Guilds. There are so many ways we’ve governed ourselves.

    Here’s a nice summary of options in 2 parts:

    Worldbuilding: 36 Types of Government (Part 1)
    Worldbuilding: 36 Types of Government (Part 2)

    Tech to help?

    One of the cons in all of governance is the time and effort. And that’s where I’m curious about the tech that could help. Where could it help? But some of these are it’s tricky and at scale costly.

    • AI
      • Summarize all the legalese
      • Get updates to legislation
      • Keep everyone aligned
      • Ask for advise and next steps
      • Seek feedback from
    • Decentralized and transparent ( open )
      • polling and decision making
      • identity (this one is not really a can we… it’s more like which methods)
      • law & legislation management

    Creative Commons but for governance

    Creative Commons helps me understand copyright in a way that made it accessible. It gave me tools and options I never thought of. Governance feel the same in a way.

    • Where does one start?
    • What are the options?
    • How do I pick methods and models?
    • Can I cherry pick or modify?
    • Is there a common resource option to discuss
    • Can we make it a bit more relatable?

    What it all means with Orality

    As we shift into an aliterate world we’re going to need to all understand governance a lot more.

    When England reached a literate tipping point ( 50% ) the monarchy changed dramatically. At the time of the formation of The United States it was most literate societies on the planet.

    Our governance will shift dramatically again. It’s time we have a good foundation or understanding when it does.

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Ong’s Oral Culture Recap

    Where was I? I’ve forgotten where I was in reflecting on Ong’s Psychodynamics of Orality with our current culture. So this recap is partly for me as it is you.

    I hope you can see where I’m going with this.

    It was coined “secondary orality” because I don’t think anyone realized how close could it get to a primary oral culture?

    In the thick of academia and logic, it’s hard to imagine. However, with recent events unfolding before our eyes, I think we’re realizing, perhaps it’s closer that we thought.

    Fediverse Reactions
  • Don’t get it. Won’t get it.

    Don’t get it. Won’t get it.

    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