My first thought in reading about an oral culture was how easy it must be for those in power to manipulate those they rule over. If what you say is law, then when you are wrong who would know to oppose you? With everything we have today, we hear, read, and see different viewpoint from different countries and conflicts. With an oral culture (in which I always picture a small village with new news coming only from traveling merchants and sings bards), all you know is what those around you know, and most of what you hear is influenced by the one (or group) in power. Imagine North Korea and how the political view is its citizen’s view.
It must not be surprising to hear that for this day in age, it is hard to grasp the complete implication of a completely oral culture. Looking back on it, it seems not too far back in history, yet understanding it is like trying to explain color to one who cannot see. Imagining a life without cheat sheet notes to study for a test, or always having to only “take someone’s word for it” is mind-boggling. We can get only an inkling of understanding when remembering how we learned as children, like ‘the days of the week’ song, or little sayings like ‘Never Eat Sour Watermelons’ to remember the direction of the compass and ‘Every Good Boy Does Fine’ to remember the notes on sheet music.
Still, the long-term memory can only hold so much even with rhymes and songs. To only “know what you can recall” in an oral culture or dominantly illiterate community would be unreasonable if they didn’t have more job specialization (like having an apprentice) or family businesses to make it easier to pass on the knowledge of what they know. Thinking on it, with technology advancing as such a fast speed will generations to come have to memorize less as technology becomes as easily accessible as wearing knowledge (computer screens) on our sleeves?
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The idea of wearing a computer never occurred to me. It does seem as if acquiring a bunch of knowledge for a test that you are just going to forget anyways has to be on the way out with the accessibility that technology is soon to offer. If you could wear a computer like a watch, no one would ever need to memorize the periodic table ever again, or for that matter any chemistry. When we are older I could see a whole textbook the size of a watch, but instead of reading it you ask it questions when they are pertinent to you. We are on our way to never really needing to remember anything that we do not truly care about. It will all be at our grasp with a few keystrokes.
Do you guys remember the matrix when Neo gets all the information uploaded into his brain, and he instantly knows Kung-Fu. That was pretty sweet, hopefully that happens.
I can't imagine not having something to refer to nowadays. I can barely remember the tasks if I don't write them down. It's hard to say that maybe we would have less to do if writing was never developed. That just means more labor work.
Part of what has made us so successful was the development of technology and it was documented. Someone created something and then wrote it down. Another person else took those same instructions and re-created a duplicate creation allowing for more efficiency for whatever task there may be. From there, the technology just got better and more complicated. AND there is also the development of hackers to cause the developer(s) to have to be more careful in the design to make it secure and unbreakable.
You also mentioned about the need to ever memorize anything if technology becomes more accessible - this could be a good and bad thing. Good because we can focus on the actually using the information. Bad because if you think about it, are we really learning anything? If we depend so much on that computer, what will we do when it breaks?
This opinion fascinated me because when I read about a completely oral culture, I didn’t even imagine how this would affect our politics. Would our leader, whether it is a president or dictator, be the person who was the “smoothest” talker? What credentials would anyone need to have in order to qualify them as a superior? Even if we had decided to not rank a person as being our superior or to not rule us, but we would still need some form or order or rules. We know that some small villages can maintain a lifestyle without the use of text and communication in the form of human messengers, but would an entire civilization be able to live and still maintain some form of order? Like Gabi said, “how easy it must be for those in power to manipulate those they rule over” and since we have come so far not only in politics, but also in technology, that if we were to give up the use of text now, we would feel as if we had just been sent back to the stone age.
It is very interesting to think that we are heading in the complete opposite direction from the oral culture of our ancesters to where we have no need for long or short term memory because computers could do that for us with our "memory sleeves." Wearable knowledge is a very interesting concept. Unfortunately it makes it seem like we will become part machine and therefore more like robots than individuals were we could be programmed to optain certain skills. A society where we just pay for skills to be installled into our memory. Could we become all knowing or atleast full of knowledge memory that could be accessed at any time. Will that mean there shall be equality of information provided to the masses like internal internet provider in the brain. What an interesting topic you have proposed Gabi D. I have been trying to reason out what it must be like to live in a completely oral culture and I have not been satisfied until your example. It is like trying to explain color to one who cannot see color. It is impossible to imagine truly imagine a world without if you have always lived in a world with. Great discussion
I believe that if we had easily accesible information technology on our sleave, then we would not become of machines. This would by far make us more intelligent. The more easy and accesible knowledge is then the more we will be using it. The more we use it, the more familiar we come with it. It becomes more recognizable. I think this technology would have a great intellectual impact on our future societies, just as the personal computer has done to our generations society. Its made us become more accesible to information technology, which in turn has made us become familiar with more information.
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