The orality theory of everything - Derek Thompson - 2026

Mass literacy restructured our consciousness, and now the rise of social media is again transforming what it feels like to be a thinking person, Derek Thompson argues. https://theatln.tc/PcAKPyxO This idea can be characterized by

, which emerged from the work of mid-20th-century media theorists, especially Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan. “They argued that the invention of the alphabet and the rise of literacy were among the most important events in human history,” Thompson writes. These developments moved communications from an age of orality—in which all information was spoken, and all learning was social—to an age of literacy, in which writing could fix words in place, and develop ever more complicated ideas that would have been impossible to memorize. “The age of orality was an age of social storytelling and flexible cultural memory. The age of literacy made possible a set of abstract systems of thought—calculus, physics, advanced biology, quantum mechanics—that form the basis of all modern technology,” Thompson writes. Now the current demise of literate culture—exemplified by the growing prevalence of social media and decline in reading—may be signaling a return to orality that is once again transforming the human experience, he argues. At the link, read Thompson’s discussion with Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal about how the concepts of orality and literacy are shaping nearly everything we know.