Who is Nick?

Asking all my life.

#orality

  • 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

  • Yo mamma is so…

    … agonistically toned!

    Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

    “No, you’re agonistically toned!”

    In, Ong’s, Orality & Literacy, I have to admit for me, “Agonistically toned” was one of the lesser argued characteristics. Perhaps it’s because his use of laser specific language; it’s name has more punch? It sure wasn’t the generic references to old plays and stories such as Iliad, Beowulf, and The Mwindo Epic.

    What is agonistic?

    Not agnostic.
    Not antagonist.
    To the dictionary!

    2. Argumentative

    3. Striving for effect

    4. Relating to, or being aggressive or defensive social interaction between individuals usually of the same species 1

    While “Argumentative” maybe a doomsday definition you may lean toward, it’s also “striving for effect.” What Ong continued to point out, is it is also about being boastful; peacocking and bloating chests.

    Bragging about one’s own prowess and/or verbal tongue-lashings of an opponent figure regularly in encounters…

    Based off the old plays, this may seem oddly over the top and, perhaps to literate society, could come across as “insincere, flatulent, and comically pretentious.”

    Recently Agonistic


    Rap battles are a great example of agonistic tone. Two rappers slinging saturated, insults at each other while making themselves larger than life. But what else in modern culture could be considered agonistically toned?

    Here’s a quick list of other recent examples

    • Every “character” in a reality TV show
    • The more questionable Minecraft YouTube show hosts my son sneaks
    • Every Xitter post from it’s owner
    • The 45th, now, 47th US President-Elect

    Good or Bad?

    What I find interesting about this characteristic is, Ong, is careful not to say an oral culture is simply agonistic, but agonistically toned. Meaning that while they sounded agonistic, they may not physically be.

    Reading Orality & Literacy, there is attention to stay unbiased, to have no opinion on better or worse between literate and oral culture. While others might exclude “tone” from the characteristic and go towards tribalism and the darker natures of our past coming back; while perhaps Ong had a personal opinion, he gently stays out of that fight.

    Does a highly agonistically tonned society lead to agonistic behaviour 2? Could there be a future where Agonism is everywhere?

    1. Note: I’m not sure what “usually of the same species” has to do with anything. But sure, we’ll go with it. ↩︎
    2. Ah… that explains the specific species language. Many of the studies are not on humans. ↩︎

  • 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

  • You know what you can recall

    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.

  • Had a chat this week with a friend who’s been feeling that movies lately are feeling “over the top”. Like actors are “always on”. Could be, we’ve passed “that line” ( you know the old folks one where you get it, but you don’t get it ). Then we had a good chat about the new need for grandiose, heavy, and bizarre stories.

  • Proficiently Literate?

    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:

  • Our grandiose lives

    Our grandiose lives

    We want larger than life stories to remember the simple things

    I’ve gone off the beaten track for the past couple of posts. And it’s time to get back to Ong and his characteristics of oral cultures. And today, we’re going to look at

    The noetic role of heroic ‘heavy’ figures and of the bizarre

    In this, Ong focuses on the tall tale.

    The absurd and larger-than-life heroes and characters, in oral cultures, aren’t as grandiose as they seem. Their extreme nature is normalized & memorized over time.

    In fiction

    It’s easy to see this in fiction, the larger-than-life images and situations we watch. With advancements in technology and CG, there is an almost infinite rabbit hole we can take ourselves.

    For the longest time in our literate culture, books have held these grandiose images and stories. Then came the moving pictures. To me, it seems appropriate that some of the earliest attempts to catch our imaginations were centered around flying to the moon or robots and androids.

    Most of the great stories have elements of the absurd, bizarre, larger-than-life characters and journey. They stick with you.

    And not only that – they have an immediate word-of-mouth quality.

    In a story with a million over-the-top moments and characters, when recounted and told to friends and family, if you miss a part, a feature, it still can captivate. The heart of the story travels, even if you don’t know exactly how big or green The Hulk is.

    For fiction to be grandiose is expected. What’s really difficult to think about is what’s next: the “real” world.

    In Fact

    In 15-20 years, what will we remember about these past few years?

    It might depend on how many fictionalized movies come out.

    Over the past few years, I’ve seen an interesting trend that, I think, relates to this thought – the fictionalization of history.

    Take a look at these two lists, biographical films and biographical mini-series. I smashed them together to get this.

    Since 2020 we’ve made more historical biopics than all of the ’60s
    In case you’re curious year by year.

    We are creating & consuming our history more and more through infotainment.

    Some could argue that this isn’t real history. That these fictionalized moments are outlandish, over-the-top, made for our viewing pleasure. But maybe at the root, that’s the point. Make history bizarre, outlandish, and grandiose, and maybe we’ll actually remember a nugget of truth?

    I’ll admit, my napkin numbers may be reflective more about technology. That the cost to make TV and movies is decreasing, so that overall more content is made in general.

    But as I think about it, does this really sway the thought? How many books are there fictionalizing history? Is the history that we learn (not the journalistic history of historians) all but a story?

    Perhaps TV & movies, by their very nature, allow for the outlandish, bizarre, dramatized life for our viewing pleasure. They are designed to recreate larger-than-life moments “on the big screen,” which is kinda why we like it.

    Now for the kicker

    We take in all this over-the-top content, and over time, what happens?

    The absurd and outlandish fade, and the nugget of a moral, thought, or feeling remains.

    Ong doesn’t oppose this outlandish and bizarre, only that in oral cultures, it was more prominent. He even mentioned that in literature, this continues. However, it’s an artifact of an oral culture. It was heavily required for an oral society as a tool to normalize information through society over time.

    The postliterate

    The “heroic” heavy figure, the Ong notes, fades with literate culture. Over time there came the “anti-hero,” that “you do not need a hero in the old sense to mobilize knowledge in story form.”

    I can’t entirely agree that there was always a heavy hero. In several storytelling traditions, more complex figures took center stage. Take the trickster, the raven, the coyote, Loki, Kaulu, Mercury, the Monkey King, and more.

    Let’s look at the gods of Rome or the Norse – sure, magnificent and over the top with grand powers and bizarre and otherworldly experiences – yet flawed and almost human. They were, as Ong might call them, “heavy” figures, but all heroic? No.

    How about the Indigenous peoples of North America whose, for lack of a better word, gods were animals and nature itself. “Heavy” figures? Yes. Heroic? Not all.

    If Ong was right about needing a hero, though I disagree, perhaps in the postliterate the “heavy” figures are not an external hero, but ourselves. Celebrities taking the limelight. While the rest stage our lives to be bigger, to be more outlandish, to be more grandiose than they are. All with the idea to be seen, and maybe what’s harder to acknowledge, to be remembered.

    Though, perhaps this is a transition? Maybe we’re stewing and creating the recipe to create a new set of Roman and Norse-like gods. People who may actually have been real at one point in time, only to have their lives made bizarre and over-the-top from some sort of common societal draw.

    Photo by Robert Gourley on Unsplash

    Originally posted on Substack