Whither Digitality? The Relationship Between Orality, Literacy, and Digitality, Past and Present: From Spoken Traditions to Digital Media

Abstract

Orality, literacy, and digitality are forms of knowledge and communication based on speech, reading and writing, and electronic technologies using binary formats, respectively. This article reviews four possible relationships between them: Is literacy (and by extension digitality) the superior form, is orality superior, are all three mostly interchangeable, or do they all change each other as they emerge historically? These different positions imply different histories: linear, contingent, and epochal. This article considers the future of digitality by reviewing these relationships, past and present. These four intellectual positions did not arise neutrally. In fact, the superiority of literacy is rooted in Eurocentric views of technological progress and colonial power. Because this positionality is crucial to understanding the historical relationship among them, the article draws on the philosophy of science of dialectical realism to look for the similarities and differences between the positions, as well as the contradictions. It is a bold call for the comparative historical sociology of digitality (and everything else).