Neo-Neo-Orality

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey hit the big screen last Friday, the ancient Greek epic retold for modern audiences in Nolan’s beloved IMAX. Homer is widely credited as the author of the tale, having penned it to papyrus at some point between 725-675 BCE. But by this time, the story was already hundreds of years old, with wandering bards having memorised and performed it aloud for centuries. No retelling was the same. The story evolved as it was spoken.

Nolan’s iteration lands at a time where the oral tradition is being revived in new forms, manifesting in podcasts, voice notes and parasocial relationships. The essay below comes from our recent Stupid REPORT, and contextualises and dissects this renaissance, something we're calling neo-neo-orality.

Exploring how information is transmitted and delivered, Centreless Culture by Rina Nicolae assesses the distinct modes of communication that have defined human intelligence: oral speech, handwritten script, print, broadcast media and digital networks. The most recent regime being the the internet, which Nicolae observes replicates culture so rapidly it fractures. Media that’s unstable and uncertain.

“In the regime of the digital network, the shape of culture itself is also morphing into something more similar to that of the oral era. In that sense, [Marshall] McLuhan’s “global village” may actually be shaping up to be a web of global villages. Culture takes on the shape of a network.”
– Rina Nicolae, Centreless Culture

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In 1962, Marshall McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man laid out how visual culture had come to eclipse the aural and oral. His argument revealed how the invention of the Gutenberg printing press compressed complex oral traditions into something flat, uniform and standardised. Instead of stories being unique to each telling, messages were now manufactured into identical copies.

Referencing art curator William Ivins, McLuhan noted how the "visual homogenising of experience" relegates the "auditory and other sensuous complexity to the background." In his text Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), McLuhan crystallises the theory – “the medium is the message”. 

But due to a typeset error, first editions printed “The Medium is the Massage”. Upon reviewing the copies, McLuhan exclaimed, “Leave it alone! It’s great and right on target!”. As such, there are in fact four possible readings of the final word which the Marshall McLuhan estate clarifies are: “Message” and “Mess Age”, “Massage” and “Mass Age”. Inspired, McLuhan went on to publish a book, this time intentionally entitled The Medium is the Massage, a few years later.

While we’ve been living in the internet age for over 20 years, recent signals suggest a return to orality, with some culture commentators defining this era as "digital orality". Nicolae outlines how digital networks resemble the low fidelity media McLuhan categorised as “cool” media, something that offers minimal sensory data. “Under the informatic regime of the digital network, we return to low fidelity conditions, which means that even as information travels far, meaning and value stay close to home,” Nicolae explains. “This results in a cultural landscape that most closely resembles that of oral, pre-literate societies – a plurality of local niches that maintain coherence for their immediate communities – but this time, with more interconnection between them." Information once again becomes fluid and malleable.

This is something the podcast boom encapsulates, and which distinguished philosopher, professor and priest Walter J. Ong would define as "secondary orality" – a medium in which we play passive witness rather than active participant. Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl's idea of “intimacy at distance” is another way of thinking about it.

“A written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place.”
– Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy

“Intelligence is not and should never be the elimination of uncertainty. It is the art of staying responsive to life.”
– Janne Baetsen, SEED CLUB

The revival of the oral tradition also carries some danger with it. Clever rhetoric disguising stupid, careless thought. Donald Trump is the ultimate brash orator, using alluring language to deploy harmful messages. Critics have even drawn comparisons between Trump’s techniques and Homer's. For example, in Homer’s The Iliad, Achilles is referred to as “swift-footed Achilles" to reinforce his defining trait, while Trump would tactically refer to Joe Biden as “sleepy Joe Biden”.

“Elon Musk is stupid. Even though he’s certainly smart, that 'brilliance' might also trap him in his own certainty, making him act like a complete idiot. I think stupidity is the inability to admit you might not know enough, being unable to question yourself, constantly assuming you’re right and refusing to learn or adapt. Basically the opposite of mental elasticity.”
– Finn Bohn, SEED CLUB

Orality is embodied and deeply social, occurring when we’re within earshot of one another, stirring up unexpected conversation and debate. In these environments, admitting uncertainty demonstrates a capacity for knowledge rather than absence of it. AI on the other hand offers instant answers, and is quick to enforces whatever thoughts you plug it with, however stupid.

In the neo-neo-oral age, when the process of reaching an answer becomes more precious than the answer itself, brands can act as sites of curiosity, encouraging people to ask stupid questions and wonder out loud.