Reverting Back to the Caves: How Modern Media is Becoming More Orally Based

Neil Fastabend
Dr. Farman
DTC 375: Language, Texts & Technology
18 February, 2009
Word Count: 924

Through years of evolution in our species and in the technology we create, humans have moved from an oral based culture to the development of written language and widespread literacy. However, as our technology has progressed we have began to revert back to the more orally based communications of the past. Modern day society is progressing towards faster and faster communications, of text based information is not a part. Because of this move towards faster speeds, writing has become less desirable, and modern media is becoming more orally based.

During the class lecture on "Culture without Literacy," McLuhan argued that the post-historic man of today is becoming more like pre-historic man in that the amount of oral based communications we use is growing dramatically. McLuhan says that the literary communication of historic man is focused more on an individual experience with a lack of visual input and more of a inner-dialogue. Pre-historic man was focused on a more social experience and focused on a greater involvement in the communication process. This is the direction McLuhan argues that post-historic man is heading. With the invent of cinema and the television, as well as present day computer-based information gathering, our media is moving more towards the pre-historic idea of quick visual or audible communication and is focusing less on literary forms such as books.

Walter Ong states that "With telephone, radio, television and various kinds of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of 'secondary orality'" (71). This secondary orality is the modern day form of pre-historic oral culture. Unlike the pre-historic version, secondary orality is "based permanently on the use of writing and print" (Ong, 71). As our society has progressed, we have been able to take previous forms of textual communication and form them into a more oral form, such as a film or a television show. Primary and secondary orality are both focused on greater social interaction than literary based communication, but according to Ong, "secondary orality generates a sense for groups immeasurably larger than those of primary oral culture," further explaining it by saying "before writing, oral folk were group-minded because no feasible alternative had presented itself. In our age of secondary orality, we are group-minded self-consciously and programmatically. The individual feels that he or she, as an individual, must be socially sensitive" (71). In a way we are so overwhelmed by information from all parts of the world that this sense of a "global village" as McLuhan put it, has forced us to become a more social-based society again.

Modern technology has also played a very great factor in the growth of oral culture today. It began with the increased speed of transportation. With the invention of the train, and steamboats, and later on the creations of the automobile and the airplane, transportation speeds have increased exponentially from the days of horses. We are now able to travel anywhere in the world in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. With the leaps forward in communication technology from the telegraph to the internet we are now able to talk to someone on the other side of the world in seconds. We no longer rely on sending written messages and waiting weeks for people to get them, we can reach information and distribute it again instantly. This has been the greatest factor in transforming our culture from text-based back to a more oral-based one. These creations have sped up our lives so much that we no longer want to sit down and read a book. Why should we spend days reading something when we can just watch the movie that was based on the book which only takes a couple hours? Newspapers are even going out of business due to how fast people can get the information on 24 hour news stations on television or on the internet. Even with as much textual information as there is on the internet, more and more media online is becoming oral. YouTube has allowed people to create short videos to distribute information rather than writing it out. Websites are also becoming more flash-based to entertain the user with visual information. Instead of giving them a page of text to read, they will show elaborate displays with audio and video to convey their message because they want to keep the viewer's attention. Text messages have also moved away from complete text and have instead tried to speed their form of communication up as well by using acronyms and abbreviations to quickly deliver a message.

Media today is far different than it was a couple centuries ago. Our drastic improvements in transportation and communication technologies has changed our culture from a textual one to an oral one again. This new form of secondary orality has influenced almost all aspects of media that we view today. Our society continues to move faster and faster as technology progresses, and the media we use is trying desperately to keep up. The text-based medium is slowly getting changed into visual and audible media which allows us to quickly get what we need and move on, and with the rate society is moving, it doesn't look like that is going to change any time soon.


Works Cited

Ong, Walter. "Orality, Literacy, and Modern Media." Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. David Crowley and Paul Heyer. Boston: Pearson, 2007.