{"updated":"2026-11-09T05:55:43Z","content_md":"[Your Book Review: Orality and Literacy - by Scott Alexander](https:\/\/www.astralcodexten.com\/p\/your-book-review-orality-and-literacy)\n\n![[2rpknz3c0vp734042bnqv3mpg0]]\n\n![[47m66y41c3aefx74qjj5ayv6bp]]\n\n![[4gj7qfprjsw54a4nadyavqyyz2]]\n\n![[5j94t8dk9t8asm2yrsr62mb8d5]]\n\n![[3vcbk5r2k3e8zwstdhkcpv69sy]]\n\n![[5vmtm5ye93rxsgf839zz4x5jdb]]","changelog":[{"version":1,"at":"2026-11-09T05:55:43Z","note":null}],"transclusions":[{"id":"2rpknz3c0vp734042bnqv3mpg0","version":1},{"id":"47m66y41c3aefx74qjj5ayv6bp","version":1},{"id":"4gj7qfprjsw54a4nadyavqyyz2","version":1},{"id":"5j94t8dk9t8asm2yrsr62mb8d5","version":1},{"id":"3vcbk5r2k3e8zwstdhkcpv69sy","version":1},{"id":"5vmtm5ye93rxsgf839zz4x5jdb","version":2}],"created":"2026-11-09T05:55:43Z","page":"f\/381fd83zedn5hvj6mxfngyhzwy\/","content_hash":"sha256:5dfebf602bba4fe97d1a49ce77bc0abc76e1d99366c14d8848529ae6e355c57b","id":"381fd83zedn5hvj6mxfngyhzwy","kind":"thread","origin":"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/blyg\/","content_html":"<div><div><div class=\"blyg-title\"><span><a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.astralcodexten.com\/p\/your-book-review-orality-and-literacy\" target=\"_blank\">Your Book Review: Orality and Literacy - by Scott Alexander<\/a> <\/span><\/div><\/div><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"2rpknz3c0vp734042bnqv3mpg0\" data-blyg-version=\"1\"><div><span>A good review of <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/Orality-and-Literacy\">Orality and Literacy<\/a> by <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/SlateStarCodex\">SlateStarCodex<\/a> (I think, its part of some contest so maybe somebody else wrote it?). It&apos;s very amusing to see the difference in focus between him and me. He&apos;s going on about how writing enables all sorts of more complex cognition and cultural memory than orality. Which, yeah, obviously. My own take was kind of the opposite; because it dawned on me (also due to <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/Writing-and-Representation\">Writing and Representation<\/a> ) that our models of mind, computational models, are based on writing, whereas orality is much closer to the way thinking works.<\/span><\/div><\/blockquote><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"47m66y41c3aefx74qjj5ayv6bp\" data-blyg-version=\"1\"><div><span>Seeing this also makes it easy to spot the difference between writing-based models of the mind (logic. classic rationality, most of <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/GOFAI\">GOFAI<\/a>) and those with a more oral orientation: <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/cybernetics\">cybernetics<\/a>, <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/situated-action\">situated action<\/a>, <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/Marvin-Minsky\u2215Society-of-Mind\">Society of Mind<\/a>. The latter aren&apos;t about orality <i>per se<\/i> but focus on the psychodynamics of thought, its energetic nature, which is also exposed by orality.<\/span><\/div><\/blockquote><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"4gj7qfprjsw54a4nadyavqyyz2\" data-blyg-version=\"1\"><div><div>One trivial mistake that made me feel old:<\/div><ul class=\"blyg-children\"><li><div><div><blockquote>When Ong wrote his book in 1982, he noticed that new technology like \u201ctelephone, radio, and television\u201d were making culture more oral again. Funnily, he mostly glossed over the biggest new technology: the computer.<\/blockquote><\/div><ul class=\"blyg-children\"><li><div>There were maybe 20,000 users of email in 1982 (I was one of them), mostly from university and private research labs. There weren&apos;t that many personal computers and no network to connect them, so no, Ong was not glossing over anything, the computer as a mass communication vehicle didn&apos;t exist yet. I suppose the exact structure of the past is a blur if you didn&apos;t live through it.<\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/blockquote><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"5j94t8dk9t8asm2yrsr62mb8d5\" data-blyg-version=\"1\"><div><\/div><\/blockquote><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"3vcbk5r2k3e8zwstdhkcpv69sy\" data-blyg-version=\"1\"><div><div>There are very long sections on the perils and nature of social media, and celebrations of the more extreme things that writing makes possible:<\/div><ul class=\"blyg-children\"><li><div><blockquote>Code is writing on crack. Unlike regular writing, it basically can\u2019t be spoken or listened to. It is extremely analytical and precise, in a way that writing rarely achieves.<\/blockquote><\/div><\/li><li><div><div><blockquote>Scrolling makes heavy use of speech. It even makes good use of transcribed speech. But it can\u2019t make much use of the highest forms of literacy, the forms that are impossible to speak out loud: tables, equations, code.<\/blockquote><\/div><ul class=\"blyg-children\"><li><div><span>OK writing is very cool and powerful, so are tables, but are tables and code &quot;the highest form of literacy&quot;? Only if you are a <a class=\"pagelink\" href=\"https:\/\/ammdi.hyperphor.com\/philistinism\">philistine<\/a>.<\/span><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/blockquote><blockquote class=\"blyg-transclusion\" data-blyg-id=\"5vmtm5ye93rxsgf839zz4x5jdb\" data-blyg-version=\"2\"><div><\/div><\/blockquote><\/div>","version":1,"media":[],"blyg":"0.3"}