The world is stuffed with theories of all the pieces. The smartphone idea of all the pieces argues that our private units are accountable for the rise of political polarization, nervousness, despair, and conspiracy theories—to not point out the decline of consideration spans, intelligence, happiness, and normal comity. The housing idea of all the pieces pins inequality, local weather change, weight problems, and declining fertility on the West’s incapacity to construct sufficient houses. For those who deal with theories of all the pieces as literal theories of all the pieces, you may be disillusioned to seek out that all of them have holes. I choose to think about them as workouts in pondering by the ways in which single phenomena can have massive and unpredictable second-order results.
My new favourite idea of all the pieces is the orality idea of all the pieces. This idea emerges from the work of mid-Twentieth-century media theorists, particularly Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan. They argued that the invention of the alphabet and the rise of literacy have been among the many most necessary occasions in human historical past. These developments shifted communications from an age of orality—by which all data was spoken and all studying was social—to an age of literacy, by which writing might repair phrases in place, permitting folks to jot down alone, learn alone, and develop ever extra difficult concepts that may have been inconceivable to memorize. The age of orality was an age of social storytelling and versatile cultural reminiscence. The age of literacy made potential a set of summary methods of thought—calculus, physics, superior biology, quantum mechanics—that type the idea of all fashionable know-how. However that’s not all, Ong and his ilk stated. Literacy actually restructured our consciousness, and the demise of literate tradition—the decline of studying and the rise of social media—is once more remodeling what it feels prefer to be a pondering individual.
Essentially the most enthusiastic fashionable proponent of the orality idea of all the pieces that I do know of is Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal, the co-host of the Odd Heaps podcast. We mentioned orality, literacy, and the implications for politics, storytelling, experience, social relations, and far more. The next transcript has been edited for readability, brevity, and the aim of constructing each audio system sound a bit smarter.
Derek Thompson: The return of orality: Why do you suppose it explains all the pieces?
Joe Weisenthal: I don’t suppose it explains all the pieces. I feel it solely explains 99 % of all the pieces.
I consider that human communication is turning into extra oral. And by that I don’t simply imply that persons are speaking extra with their mouths, though I do suppose that’s the case. It’s extra that communication on the whole, whether or not within the spoken type or within the digital type, has the traits of dialog. And it really harkens again to a time earlier than, actually, the written phrase, or actually earlier than mass literacy.
In 2016, in the course of the presidential election, I began studying the work of Walter Ong. He was a Jesuit priest. He studied with Marshall McLuhan. He was at Saint Louis College and wrote this actually unbelievable guide known as Orality and Literacy. The gist is that people [in oral cultures] basically suppose in a different way after they’re on this world that you simply can’t write something down, that you simply can’t look something up. For many of human historical past, there was no technique to search for something in any respect. There was no reference materials and so forth. And as such, folks needed to optimize their communication for the circumstances of that point.
By way of quite a lot of research of Homer and different historical epics, folks realized that there have been sure patterns of communication. Individuals spoke with rhythm and rhyme and musicality, as a result of it helps folks memorize issues. Sure phrases simply get repeated time and again. Repetition, communication, and knowledge have been optimized for memorability, in packets, and what we might name “going viral.” Once I began studying this guide, I used to be like, Look, this has quite a lot of explanatory energy. These items that characterize the Homeric instances—the best way society prioritized and packaged data—significantly resemble what we see right now. My massive thesis is that as communication turns into extra of this back-and-forthness, it’s altering the best way that we talk and the best way we predict.
Thompson: To drill down on why the shift to literacy was so necessary for the best way we predict, for the best way we transmit data, for the best way we construct establishments, I wish to quote two nice students right here. The primary is Joshua Meyrowitz, an emeritus professor of communication on the College of New Hampshire. He writes in No Sense of Place: The Influence of Digital Media on Social Conduct:
The break from complete reliance on oral communication permits folks to turn out to be extra introspective, rational, and individualistic. Summary thought develops. From the round world of sound with its spherical huts and spherical villages, folks transfer, over time, towards linear, trigger and impact pondering, grid-like cities, and a one factor at a time and one factor after one other world that mimics the linear traces of writing and sort.
The second is from one other nice scholar named Joe Weisenthal:
Most of the issues that fashionable establishments are constructed on—enlightenment pondering, formal logic, purpose, meritocracy, analyzing the proof—are downstream from the flexibility to ponder the written phrase at a distance.
Why don’t you develop on both quote?
Weisenthal: Individuals can most likely really feel this. While you’re in a dialog, on-line or offline, what are you doing? You’re usually attempting to impress somebody. You could be attempting to one-up somebody. Perhaps if there’s a number of folks there, you’re attempting to place somebody all the way down to look cool for the opposite individual. These are all issues that happen that don’t happen whenever you’re in solitude. A solo interplay with language can solely be achieved actually with the written phrase. Even setting apart the logical arguments for the connection between the alphabet and left-to-right pondering and linear pondering, most individuals, I feel, might intuitively perceive that interactive environments foster completely different priorities.
While you’re writing a letter, or actually, let’s say, you’re writing a guide as you’ve, you don’t essentially have the reader in thoughts at that precise second. Actually, you’ve the posh of writing and never having to consider what the reader goes to be doing at this second. These are all luxuries that happen within the context of literacy—the written phrase—which are separate from a dialog. And so the written phrase creates every kind of latest alternatives to suppose by these items, to take time, to not reply immediately.
Thompson: Pondering was once one thing that needed to be achieved socially. It was inconceivable to study The Odyssey by yourself. It was transmitted to you from an individual. You’d rehearse it with another person. The mode of knowledge switch was essentially social. Books are written alone, and books are usually learn alone. And so this age of literacy gave rise to this privilege of solitude and interiority that I feel is actually, actually necessary.
Walter Ong, our mutual hero, has an amazing quote that I wish to throw to you after which get your response to, as a result of it goes proper up to now. He stated:
Human beings in major oral cultures … don’t “research.” They study by apprenticeship—looking with skilled hunters, for instance—by discipleship, which is a form of apprenticeship, by listening, by repeating what they hear, by mastering proverbs and methods of mixing and recombining them … not by research within the strict sense.
I’m very desirous about a phenomenon that I name the delinquent century, the concept that for quite a lot of causes, we’re spending far more time alone. And that’s having a bunch of second- and third-order results. And it truly is attention-grabbing to me, as I used to be going deeper into this undertaking, to suppose that it’s the age of literacy that in some ways allowed us to be alone as we realized, and to prize a sure form of interiority.
Weisenthal: Marshall McLuhan had this commentary: The alphabet is essentially the most detribalizing know-how that’s ever existed. It speaks to this concept that previous to the written phrase, all data was, per se, communal. It needed to be in a gaggle. When you’ve got a number of texts in entrance of you, then you definately belief the one which feels most obvious. However you don’t have that luxurious when all data is communal. Being a part of the gang needs to be a part of studying.
The ear and the attention are very completely different organs. You possibly can shut your eyes, which you’ll’t do along with your ears. You may get perspective out of your eye and set up perspective in a manner you possibly can’t do along with your ears. So it’s such as you go right into a room and you may stand again on the nook so you possibly can just remember to can see all the pieces happening within the room. The ear could be very completely different. We’re on the heart of all the pieces consistently. You possibly can’t shut it. The ear continues to work whereas we’re sleeping. There’s an evolutionary goal for the truth that we will nonetheless hear after we’re sleeping, as a result of if there’s an intruder or a wild animal or one thing, it wakes us up and we will run.
So the ear, McLuhan stated, is inherently a supply of terror. It feels very digital. Regardless that we do take a look at the web, there may be this sense by which we will by no means take away ourselves from it. Even when we’re studying the web, it nearly feels extra like we’re listening to it. There’s an immersiveness in up to date digital discourse that I feel is far more like listening to than it’s about seeing. So I feel there’s every kind of various ways in which we’re form of returning to this realm.
Thompson: We had the age of orality, which was the age of the ear. Then we had the high-water mark of literacy, which is the high-water mark of the age of the attention. And now we’re on this messy third stage the place it’s like there’s some human facial organ that’s an eye fixed and an ear mashed collectively, as a result of we now have TV and radio and social media and TikTok. And what’s attention-grabbing about these applied sciences is that they’re all oral. What’s radio, if not oral? What’s tv, if not oral? What’s TikTok, if not spoken and dwell?
However there’s a long-lasting file of your tweets. There’s a long-lasting file of that TikTok, which could be shared. And the truth that these items of media could be recorded signifies that in some ways they’re additionally of a chunk with the age of literacy, of literate recorded artifacts. What will we make of this bizarre artificial new stage that we’re in? What will we name it? How will we describe it?
Weisenthal: Andrey Mir, who has written a number of the finest stuff updating Ong’s concepts, calls it digital orality. I like that. One factor that’s attention-grabbing, although, is that we would probably not have these data sooner or later. For one factor, issues disappear. Two, we don’t actually belief photos anymore. The archive is form of tenuous. We perhaps had this temporary interval the place we had quite a lot of digital archives and we might belief them, however digital archives are disappearing and also you’re going to have facsimiles, issues that appeared like they occurred that didn’t truly occur, which, by the way, Ong talks about.
So he talks about how in quite a lot of oral cultures, historical past was malleable. He talks about biblical genealogies: So-and-so begat so-and-so begat so-and-so begat so-and-so begat, on ceaselessly. There are quite a lot of examples in oral cultures the place, when one thing is now not handy—perhaps there are some lineage of kings and that king falls into disrepute they usually change it—they’ll simply give you a brand new poem. And so there isn’t the concept of a set historical past. I feel that’s most likely what’s going to occur right now. We’re going to have books for a really very long time, however historical past will likely be manufactured in accordance with the form of up to date values of the second.
Thompson: It is a interval that some folks name post-literate. Studying is in decline. Standardized-test scores are in decline. As I’ve written, it typically seems like all the pieces is attempting to turn out to be tv. Social media is turning into TV; podcasts have gotten TV. Individuals are going to the films much less. All the things is evolving towards short-form video. I ponder how you’re feeling about this normal thesis that in a post-literate age, all the pieces is evolving towards short-form video.
Weisenthal: This concept of post-literacy, I feel there’s a form of figurative which means and a literal which means. On the one hand, once more, after I hear the phrase post-literacy or after I’ve used the time period, it doesn’t essentially imply that folks don’t know find out how to learn. I nonetheless suppose it’s largely helpful as a time period to explain circumstances of knowledge and circumstances of communication which are very distinct from solitary, literate communications. So I feel the truth that a lot is speak, a lot is back-and-forthness, a lot is data designed to be viral, memorable, repeatable—that is largely what I’m pondering of after I take into consideration post-literacy.
By the way, I don’t suppose folks know find out how to learn both. I take a look at myself and I feel I learn far more books than 99 % of the inhabitants. However I’ll learn two pages after which I’ll test my Twitter mentions, after which I’ll learn two pages and test my Twitter mentions. Isn’t that everybody? Can anybody truly learn three pages anymore? Perhaps it’s simply me, and my consideration span is simply completely bombed out, which is feasible, as a result of, once more, I spend all day taking a look at a display. I’ll totally cop to that.
Thompson: I do even have the sense after I’m studying that there’s usually, particularly if my cellphone is anyplace inside attain or sight, one thing calling me away from that guide always.
Weisenthal: In a number of the writing from the ’60s and ’70s, one of many issues that I’ve seen is folks speaking about telephones interrupting folks having intercourse. It is a frequent commentary. They discuss unplugging the cellphone earlier than {couples} had intercourse or no matter it was. And I feel, once more, one of many issues folks discuss proper now, which I discover fascinating, is the massive fertility drops and persons are attempting to determine it out. And that is one thing that’s occurring in nearly each nation around the globe, together with China, which doesn’t resemble the remainder of the world and has averted many up to date pathologies. Even there, it’s taking place.
And I do suppose it’s very attention-grabbing that—in the event you return and take a look at how many individuals seen this phenomenon when everybody began getting telephones—the diploma to which it was as if the cellphone was the third individual there, interrupting the privateness of the couple. That’s a really highly effective commentary that I feel then has quite a lot of explanatory results for what got here afterwards, when everybody began holding a cellphone on them, each waking minute.
Thompson: I wish to apply your theories to some domains of contemporary life, beginning with politics. I went to search for Donald Trump’s nicknames, as a result of I do know that you simply’re very desirous about his propensity for epithets, for nicknames. It’s practically Homeric. Happily for our functions, Wikipedia retains monitor of all of Trump’s nicknames, so I didn’t have to recollect them—talking of outsourced reminiscence. Listed here are a few of them. Steve Bannon was “Sloppy Steve,” Joe Biden was “Sleepy Joe,” Mike Bloomberg was “Mini Mike,” Jeb Bush was, after all, “Low-Power Jeb.”
This performs into this basic custom of orality. The wine-dark seas, swift-footed Achilles. And Walter Ong has an amazing passage the place he writes about this, which I might like to get your response to:
The cliches in political denunciations in lots of low-technology creating cultures—enemy of the folks, capitalist war-mongers—that strike excessive literates as senseless are residual formulary necessities of oral thought processes.
It’s so attention-grabbing to suppose that Ong is saying that it’s low-technology creating nations the place these nicknames are prevalent. However you get up right now and the richest nation on the earth is presided over by a now two-time president whose facility for nicknames could be very well-known. What significance do you placed on this? Why is it necessary {that a} determine like Trump performs into these old style oral traditions?
Weisenthal: It’s attention-grabbing—whenever you say issues like, Oh, Trump has a form of Homeric high quality in the best way he speaks, that repels lots of people. Like, What are you speaking about? That is nothing like Homer. However my idea, which I can’t show, is that the unique bards who composed Homer have been most likely Trump-like characters. So slightly than saying Trump is a Homeric character, lets say that the individuals who gathered round and informed these historical tales have been most likely the Trump-like characters of their time. Colourful, very massive characters, individuals who have been loud, who might actually get consideration, who would captivate folks after they talked. One in all Ong’s observations in Orality and Literacy is about heavy and lightweight characters in oral societies. Heavy characters are like Cerberus, the three-headed canine; Medusa; Zeus—these larger-than-life, steadily grotesque, visually grotesque characters.
The trendy world has elevated quite a lot of what I feel Ong would name heavy characters. I actually suppose Trump is a heavy character, along with his make-up, his hair, and his complete visible presentation. I feel Elon Musk is a heavy character. We’re within the time of the heavy character.
For those who take a look at icons of the earlier age, John F. Kennedy was not a heavy character. That’s a light-weight character, a sure coolness. Barack Obama was a light-weight character; there was a sure coolness to him. One of many issues that folks debate quite a bit is, like, If Obama might run once more, wouldn’t he simply clear up? If Democrats might simply convey Obama again for a 3rd time, wouldn’t that simply remedy all of Democrats’ electoral issues? And I feel in 2016, I most likely would’ve believed that. And perhaps in 2020, I might’ve believed that. However I’m actually much less assured now. I really feel like Obama is a personality of a cooler, completely different time. A personality from a pre-TikTok time, in lots of respects.
Thompson: Let me push again right here. I feel Obama in 2004, with the primary Democratic Nationwide Committee speech, was a heavy character. I feel the presidency lightened him. I feel Trump in 2015 was a heavy character, and he’s a lighter character now having suffered overexposure. Perhaps the fissures that you simply see within the Republican Occasion are that Trump, the as soon as heavy character, is dropping the load that was once essential to preserve this coalition collectively. And persons are seeing he’s form of misplaced it. I ponder if there’s some concept that in politics, many individuals debut because the heavy character. However expertise and time and failure lightens them. And that’s a part of the explanation no president appears to outlive multiple 12 months of optimistic approval rankings. We have now realized to hate all people.
Weisenthal: Because you talked about this phenomenon, that no president can maintain excessive approval rankings (which does look like a phenomenon mainly in every single place), might we pivot? Might I herald Meyrowitz right here?
Meyrowitz, in 1985, was speaking about digital media earlier than anybody actually conceived of that concept. One in all his observations is that everyone has an onstage and a backstage. We speak on this podcast in a sure manner. However that’s completely different from how we might speak at residence with our household. Otherwise you and I would speak in a different way after we cling up this podcast and we’re saying goodbye or one thing. It is a very regular factor, which is that you simply simply speak in a different way in several environments.
What Meyrowitz anticipated in No Sense of Place is this concept that digital media would trigger us to be suspicious of people that speak in a different way in a single setting versus one other. If somebody code-switched, if somebody talked in a different way on the marketing campaign path than they did of their non-public life, then we might come to suppose, This individual’s a phony. One thing about Trump is that there are only a few examples of him ever speaking in a different way in a single setting than in every other. Individuals may very well be completely repelled by issues that he stated in public or non-public. However he’s not a hypocrite in the best way that lots of people use that phrase. He is identical in nearly each setting. That is exactly what Meyrowitz would’ve anticipated, that we might gravitate towards individuals who act the identical onstage and backstage, that we might come to view that consistency of character as a price.
Thompson: The identify of Meyrowitz’s guide is No Sense of Place. And I wish to simply decelerate on that title, as a result of it’s a pun. By no sense of place, Meyrowitz is saying that digital media extends our consciousness outward, so we don’t actually know the place we’re. I may very well be studying Twitter in Arlington, Virginia, however really feel myself turning into emotional about Gaza or Ukraine or Minneapolis, in a manner that was inconceivable within the age earlier than tv or radio. This new age of communications media takes us out of the place we’re and places us proper in entrance of the faces of people who find themselves hundreds of miles away.
However he additionally means no sense of place in a hierarchical sense. He signifies that folks will likely be ready, with digital media, to function exterior of their slot within the hierarchy: The poor will be capable to scream on the billionaires. And this, he stated, goes to create extra social unrest. It’s going to create extra, I feel he would agree, of one thing like populism. And this actually attention-grabbing concept that digital media not solely unmoors us from the place we’re geographically however that it additionally demolishes hierarchies—I feel it was extremely insightful, contemplating it was written 41 years in the past.
However he goes one step additional in a manner that’s actually stunning, and that is the half I’d actually love you to touch upon. He says this about our future relationship to experience—and God solely is aware of how many individuals have talked about what’s occurred to experience in the previous couple of many years: “Our more and more complicated technological and social world has made us rely an increasing number of closely on ‘knowledgeable data,’ however the normal publicity of ‘consultants’ as fallible human beings has lessened our religion in them as folks. The change in our picture of leaders and consultants leaves us with”—and that is precisely your level—“a mistrust of energy, but additionally with a seemingly powerless dependence on these in whom we now have little belief.”
Weisenthal: It’s loopy. It does really feel like this may very well be in The Atlantic in 2025. It’s simply to date forward of its time. You talked about the poor can scream on the billionaires. I feel most individuals would say, Look, know-how is an enabled setting by which the poor can have their voice heard and billionaires are introduced low and could be hectored, and we see that occur day by day on-line. Most individuals intuitively suppose that’s a really optimistic growth. That’s, like, an egalitarian growth. However by the identical token, there are different issues that most individuals usually are not as snug with. I feel this complete subject of research gives a sure manner of viewing historical past that isn’t solely satisfying to anybody or anybody’s political undertaking at present.
Thompson: Talking of subjects that aren’t significantly snug with any political undertaking, I’ve a query for you about AI and the way AI slots into orality versus literacy. I wish to come at it from what I hope is an attention-grabbing angle. It is a quote from Ong’s Orality and Literacy:
A written textual content is mainly unresponsive. For those who ask an individual to clarify his or her assertion, you will get a proof; in the event you ask a textual content, you get again nothing besides the identical, usually silly, phrases which known as to your query within the first place.
I reread that part on a aircraft just lately, and I jolted up in my seat. That’s what AI has modified. You possibly can enter into conversations with textual content. That’s true both at a literal stage—like, I can obtain a PDF of a guide and provides it to Claude and be like, Claude, can we discuss this guide?—but additionally, at the next summary stage, we’re speaking a couple of know-how that’s pretrained on textual content. It’s pretrained on literacy. However we now have an oral, which is to say conversational, relationship with that coaching corpus. It’s bizarre.
Weisenthal: The jury is out nonetheless on how AI slots into this. As a result of on the one hand, you possibly can add some texts to Claude and ask questions, and it turns into an interactive factor. That’s oral; that’s dialog.
However these conversations with AI, they don’t really feel like different conversations that exist on-line. The AI is just not going to insult you. The AI is just not going to talk to you in memes. The AI is just not going to make use of epithets. I’m not attempting to one-up the AI both. Ong used the phrase agonistic; oral cultures are aggressive. We see that on-line, how we’re all the time competing with each other after we’re speaking.
AI chatbot communications aren’t agonistically toned. Simply the other. Most individuals’s grievance with AI is that it’s too obsequious, that it’s not confrontational sufficient. I’ll say one thing silly to the chatbot, and it’ll say, That’s a extremely good thought, Joe! Let’s discover that additional. That is truly one of many massive issues of AI, which is that it’s insufficiently opinionated. The chatbots don’t right you. AI is conversational, but it surely doesn’t have quite a lot of these different facets of dialog that different digital conversations have.
Thompson: Perhaps the age of social media actually was the revenge of orality. However an age of AI could be far more just like the revenge of literacy.
Ong and Meyrowitz each level to this concept that literacy pulled us into ourselves. Studying is inside. After which novels, in response to the interiority of studying, grew to become extra inside. Nineteenth-century novels are extremely wealthy about what it’s prefer to be pondering and alive on this second. It’s not plot, plot, plot. It’s not family tree. It’s totally contained in the phenomenological expertise of the characters.
And AI, to me, feels far more subvocal. It seems like I’m having a dialog with myself. It’s not myself. It’s this machine that I’m speaking with, but it surely feels extra like daydreaming with myself than the antagonistic expertise of being on Twitter, the place I’m contained in the minds of different folks, thrust into the faces of strangers whom I’ve by no means met.
Weisenthal: It’s very believable. It’s not going to look precisely just like the earlier age of literacy, but it surely by no means does. These items come and go. The present age of orality is completely different, clearly, from the unique one. The return to solitude. For those who’re going forwards and backwards with the chatbot, you shut the pc, you don’t really feel that very same Oh, they’re nonetheless arguing there with out me. They’re speaking on-line about me and I’m not there to defend myself. No matter it’s. You don’t fairly have that very same pull. I feel all these items—they’ll dwell with one another, and there’ll be shades of the previous that we hear echoes of, they usually’ll be completely different, they usually’ll be related. And I feel it’s good to acknowledge these patterns and observe them, only for one’s personal sanity—to have a way of what’s pulling you in numerous completely different instructions.
Thompson: To shut with the Joeism “What’d I miss?”—what’s necessary on this house that we didn’t have time to speak about or that I didn’t sufficiently ask?
Weisenthal: I simply suppose, by and enormous, that there are quite a lot of up to date pathologies. Individuals level to digital media, the telephones, et cetera, as drivers of them. What I might simply say is, there’s quite a lot of writing that I feel helps reply these questions, that was written earlier than any of this existed. I would love it if extra folks grew to become acquainted with Josh Meyrowitz, Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, Marshall McLuhan, and so forth. I feel I would love that. I simply wish to speak to folks about them.
This text was tailored from a publish on Derek Thompson’s Substack.
