“Oral societies must invest great energy in saying over and over again what has been learned arduously over the ages. This need establishes highly traditionalist or conservative set of mind that with good reason inhibits intellectual experimentation. … By storing knowledge outside the mind, writing and, even more, print downgrade the figures of the wise old man and the wise old woman, repeaters of the past, in favor of younger discoverers of something new.” (Orality and Literacy, 41).

Similarly, Eric Havelock writes (as quoted in O&L):

“The text frees the mind of conservative tasks, that is, of its memory work, and thus enables the mind to turn itself to new speculation (Havelock 254-305). (41).

Essentially, primary orality remained traditional out of necessity. If one were to tell, retell, and pass on/down stories, the tales had to be conservative and conform to a certain structure and tale, so as to prevent as much alteration as possible. This situation was all due to the fact that narratives had to be memorized. But with the advent of writing, the requirement of memorizing everything was removed, freeing the mind to delve deeper into a narrative and remove the rigid conformist structure.

Ong goes on to state, “Narrative originality lodges not in making up new stories but in managing a particular interaction with this audience at this time….” (O&L, 41). However, I extend that concept to all speech and text, since the originality of any presentation is hinged on managing the interaction with that particular audience at that time. There is an element of kairos, here in that there is a timeliness that is affected (and effected) by the content and the audience.

We can also consider these concepts in relation to digital orality. While not written, the mind is freed of having to memorize entire narratives and speeches, since it is recorded (this advantage applies to both the receiver/audience and to the orator). The difference with primary orality being live is that it is new each time. In this way, it really is tending to a particular interaction with a particular audience at a particular time. The upside to the live setting is that it is more human – person-to-person, and the audience can ask questions. The drawback is that accuracy of any repeatable narrative or speech is greatly affected. With digital orality, a recording is unchanged and its consistency is reliable. However, as Plato would likely speak of it, it cannot answer for itself; like a book, all information is static.

That said, digital orality does open the door to far more audience interactivity than does a text. For example, while asynchronous, viewers (audience memebrs) can comment and even respond to the presentation. An excellent example of this is in the tool, Seesmic. Look for an upcoming post on this topic.