NEO-ORALITY
“In the new age of magic, when reality is labile and can be recoded by the power of signs, by narrative and memes and vibes and compelling images, art becomes a truly political technology. “ I wrote about AI slop, truth, politics, art and magic www.artforum.com/features/yea...
Slopocalypse Now
Hari Kunzru surveys the AI slop that dominates our feeds and likens the way it drowns out information to a new form of censorship.
www.artforum.com
December 7, 2025 at 11:14 AM
NEO-ORALITY
the historicity of orality and script is admittedly a western concern. In one story, Ganeśa broke his tusk in order to use it as a quill to transcribe the Mahābhārata as narrated by Vyāsa
December 4, 2025 at 2:06 AM
the historicity of orality and script is admittedly a western concern. In one story, Ganeśa broke his tusk in order to use it as a quill to transcribe the Mahābhārata as narrated by Vyāsa
This is one reason the age of orality is a bad thing, imo. It's possible (for some people) to extemporaneously riff in front of a camera and mostly be cogent but they're the exception. They could write well if they had to.
People who *can't* write well are showing their brains don't work good.
People who *can't* write well are showing their brains don't work good.
December 3, 2025 at 4:22 PM
This is one reason the age of orality is a bad thing, imo. It's possible (for some people) to extemporaneously riff in front of a camera and mostly be cogent but they're the exception. They could write well if they had to.
People who *can't* write well are showing their brains don't work good.
People who *can't* write well are showing their brains don't work good.
Oh! I thought you might be interested in the 🧵 on a amazing feat of orality in knowledge transmission directly above my ping to you (i pinged here as I don't think your settings allow direct messaging)
December 3, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Oh! I thought you might be interested in the 🧵 on a amazing feat of orality in knowledge transmission directly above my ping to you (i pinged here as I don't think your settings allow direct messaging)
have you read ong's "orality and literacy"? i'm reading it for the first time and it is aggressively germane to this
December 2, 2025 at 8:08 AM
have you read ong's "orality and literacy"? i'm reading it for the first time and it is aggressively germane to this
Also, I'd throw text-based microblogging platforms like this one into the "post-literate media" bucket. IMO communication on this site has more in common with orality than it does with books, essays, or any letter longer than a postcard.
Not sure I'd cosign every claim made in this essay, but I think the overall message is correct, urgent, and very well put. Functional illiteracy is one of the most dangerous social contagions we face today. jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...
The dawn of the post-literate society
And the end of civilisation
jmarriott.substack.com
December 1, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Also, I'd throw text-based microblogging platforms like this one into the "post-literate media" bucket. IMO communication on this site has more in common with orality than it does with books, essays, or any letter longer than a postcard.
The tapes’ orality celebrates the power and relevance of oral history. Given that women particularly struggled with migrating and adapting to a radically new life in an alien land, the tape letters allowed them to communicate when they could not read or write in other languages.
December 1, 2025 at 1:16 PM
The tapes’ orality celebrates the power and relevance of oral history. Given that women particularly struggled with migrating and adapting to a radically new life in an alien land, the tape letters allowed them to communicate when they could not read or write in other languages.
On orality, education, and the d/Deaf binary:
Manual Labor | Andrew Leland
How deaf artists and writers are grappling with a second Trump administration keen on dismantling the Americans with Disabilities Act.
thebaffler.com
November 29, 2025 at 7:17 PM
On orality, education, and the d/Deaf binary:
I was just tinkering with my theories of Orality & Aliteracy with NotebookLM and this is the podcast episode it made 🤯.
whoisnick.com/ai-summarizi...
whoisnick.com/ai-summarizi...
AI summarizing Technology and Orality in a Podcast - Who is Nick?
Take Ong, Postman, McLuhan - smash them together in NotebookLM and then click Audio Overview. Have a listen and enjoy.
whoisnick.com
November 23, 2025 at 8:31 PM
I was just tinkering with my theories of Orality & Aliteracy with NotebookLM and this is the podcast episode it made 🤯.
whoisnick.com/ai-summarizi...
whoisnick.com/ai-summarizi...
I mean I am a huge Patricia Smith fan but I am just using her as one notable representative of, as I say, the journey through “performance poetry” or slam as a way of reforging the necessary orality of poetry without losing the wonders made possible by the modernist page’s atemporality.
November 22, 2025 at 5:12 AM
I mean I am a huge Patricia Smith fan but I am just using her as one notable representative of, as I say, the journey through “performance poetry” or slam as a way of reforging the necessary orality of poetry without losing the wonders made possible by the modernist page’s atemporality.
I am reading Walter Ong’s ‘Orality and Literacy’ and it is DEFINITELY the next ‘book that I buy copies of and give to people’.
November 21, 2025 at 8:18 PM
I am reading Walter Ong’s ‘Orality and Literacy’ and it is DEFINITELY the next ‘book that I buy copies of and give to people’.
Interesting book about how the introduction of writing/literacy changed the way people think: "Orality and Literacy" (I think from 1982 or so). I guess something similar is happening now, due to smartphones, chats etc.
November 20, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Interesting book about how the introduction of writing/literacy changed the way people think: "Orality and Literacy" (I think from 1982 or so). I guess something similar is happening now, due to smartphones, chats etc.
Orality and Literacy is the new Culture of Narcissism which was the new Entertaining Ourselves to Death
November 19, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Orality and Literacy is the new Culture of Narcissism which was the new Entertaining Ourselves to Death
"[Mnemonic] storage demands that orality conditioned knowledge be relatively rigid or typical. Not only do formulas abound but characters themselves become types, not free-ranging and developmental as in the novel (print culture), but formalized. Odysseus is wily, Nestor is wise, Achilles is brave."
November 19, 2025 at 4:01 PM
"[Mnemonic] storage demands that orality conditioned knowledge be relatively rigid or typical. Not only do formulas abound but characters themselves become types, not free-ranging and developmental as in the novel (print culture), but formalized. Odysseus is wily, Nestor is wise, Achilles is brave."
I haven't read Wuthering Heights/enjoyed the trailer's aesthetics but really enjoyed reading this old Andrea Dworkin essay about the book! Very intense but so many of her points are so relevant today
(cw: mention of animal abuse)
frauenkultur.co.uk/wp-content/u...
(cw: mention of animal abuse)
frauenkultur.co.uk/wp-content/u...
November 18, 2025 at 8:51 PM
I haven't read Wuthering Heights/enjoyed the trailer's aesthetics but really enjoyed reading this old Andrea Dworkin essay about the book! Very intense but so many of her points are so relevant today
(cw: mention of animal abuse)
frauenkultur.co.uk/wp-content/u...
(cw: mention of animal abuse)
frauenkultur.co.uk/wp-content/u...
I read this on your recommendation earlier this year and was amazed at its prescience. Still building up to tackling Orality and Literacy.
November 18, 2025 at 3:12 PM
I read this on your recommendation earlier this year and was amazed at its prescience. Still building up to tackling Orality and Literacy.
Like if it wasn’t so funny it would be sad lol. I would say maybe that orality shit really is about to wreck us but in truth I know that as long as there have been humans there has been the ability to reject cultural technologies hard-won across the ages.
November 17, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Like if it wasn’t so funny it would be sad lol. I would say maybe that orality shit really is about to wreck us but in truth I know that as long as there have been humans there has been the ability to reject cultural technologies hard-won across the ages.
Reemerging orality and serf brain We Used to Read Things in This Country by Noah McCormack (The Baffler) ““When people say things like ‘Twitter is filled with fake news’ or ‘TikTok is rui...
#Learning #Society #agency #AI #class #feudalism #inequality […]
[Original post on tracydurnell.com]
#Learning #Society #agency #AI #class #feudalism #inequality […]
[Original post on tracydurnell.com]
November 25, 2025 at 9:59 PM
Reemerging orality and serf brain We Used to Read Things in This Country by Noah McCormack (The Baffler) ““When people say things like ‘Twitter is filled with fake news’ or ‘TikTok is rui...
#Learning #Society #agency #AI #class #feudalism #inequality […]
[Original post on tracydurnell.com]
#Learning #Society #agency #AI #class #feudalism #inequality […]
[Original post on tracydurnell.com]
Two recent books, a memoir and a novel, trouble the contradictions and binaries that define deaf life and culture, sorting through the alienation and unease and community and agency that define life at the edge of orality.
thebaffler.com/salvos/manua...
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thebaffler.com/salvos/manua...
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Manual Labor | Andrew Leland
How deaf artists and writers are grappling with a second Trump administration keen on dismantling the Americans with Disabilities Act.
thebaffler.com
November 14, 2025 at 3:29 AM
Two recent books, a memoir and a novel, trouble the contradictions and binaries that define deaf life and culture, sorting through the alienation and unease and community and agency that define life at the edge of orality.
thebaffler.com/salvos/manua...
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thebaffler.com/salvos/manua...
=
www.ucihealth.org/blog/2025/04...
Thecdemonsbof orality?! All orientation! Kweer too!
-Kweer Saints N Babas
Thecdemonsbof orality?! All orientation! Kweer too!
-Kweer Saints N Babas
HPV-related throat cancers soar among men | UCI Health | Orange County, CA
HPV-related throat cancers are soaring among men. But if caught early, they are highly treatable, says UCI Health head and neck cancer surgeon Dr. Tjoson Tjoa. Vaccines can also prevent boys from deve...
www.ucihealth.org
November 12, 2025 at 8:13 PM
www.ucihealth.org/blog/2025/04...
Thecdemonsbof orality?! All orientation! Kweer too!
-Kweer Saints N Babas
Thecdemonsbof orality?! All orientation! Kweer too!
-Kweer Saints N Babas
📕 Languages of Minority: orality, translation, and desiring english,
Sowmya Dechamma
#eskuratuberriak
📌 A sharp exploration of language, power, and the desire for English in India
🔗 tinyurl.com/59uvnm8k
Sowmya Dechamma
#eskuratuberriak
📌 A sharp exploration of language, power, and the desire for English in India
🔗 tinyurl.com/59uvnm8k
November 12, 2025 at 2:34 PM
📕 Languages of Minority: orality, translation, and desiring english,
Sowmya Dechamma
#eskuratuberriak
📌 A sharp exploration of language, power, and the desire for English in India
🔗 tinyurl.com/59uvnm8k
Sowmya Dechamma
#eskuratuberriak
📌 A sharp exploration of language, power, and the desire for English in India
🔗 tinyurl.com/59uvnm8k
On my way to Gent for the "Medieval Texts and their Social Contexts" conference 😊
I'll be talking about the verbal repetition and orality elements in The Lombard Laws on Fire (Arson)
🔥📖⚖️
I'll be talking about the verbal repetition and orality elements in The Lombard Laws on Fire (Arson)
🔥📖⚖️
November 12, 2025 at 7:23 AM
On my way to Gent for the "Medieval Texts and their Social Contexts" conference 😊
I'll be talking about the verbal repetition and orality elements in The Lombard Laws on Fire (Arson)
🔥📖⚖️
I'll be talking about the verbal repetition and orality elements in The Lombard Laws on Fire (Arson)
🔥📖⚖️
I sometimes imagine future historians might well depict the 16th-21st centuries as an anomalous Era of Literacy, an odd blip in the otherwise long human history of people communicating principally through images and orality.
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
We Used to Read Things in This Country | Noah McCormack
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
thebaffler.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:28 PM
I sometimes imagine future historians might well depict the 16th-21st centuries as an anomalous Era of Literacy, an odd blip in the otherwise long human history of people communicating principally through images and orality.
Thread on digital orality, folkways, and dream logic.
These principles of folkways become interesting when applied to online speech which show properties of oral and written speech, for instance conspiracies or outrage cascades, which carry both signs of mnemonic, narrative and factual character.
November 9, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Thread on digital orality, folkways, and dream logic.
Thread über Social Media als second orality und die Mechanismen zur Gruppenresonanz, die klassische Medien unterbinden. Gute Gedanken.
These principles of folkways become interesting when applied to online speech which show properties of oral and written speech, for instance conspiracies or outrage cascades, which carry both signs of mnemonic, narrative and factual character.
November 9, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Thread über Social Media als second orality und die Mechanismen zur Gruppenresonanz, die klassische Medien unterbinden. Gute Gedanken.