Jasmine Sun on oral vs literate culture, LLMs, and politics:
We are clearly returning to an oral-first culture. First, social media accelerated conversation, focusing on instantaneity over permanence and collective consciousness over individual belief. Second, video has overtaken text on every online platform (much to my personal dismay). Most people have lost the focus to read a 1,000 word article, but have no problem listening to a 3-hour podcast. Now, LLMs are in the process of obsolescing literary precision, too. Why write concisely when people will just read a summary? Why learn a system’s mechanics if an AI can do everything for you? We no longer need to convey thoughts via structured grammars. The LLM, as a universal translator, has solved legibility.
2016 was a turning point for oral culture. Peak Trump, peak Twitter, the death of the text and the fact. When we all lost our minds to the collective unconscious, the birth of a worldwide “vibe” that could shift together as one. And at the risk of sounding hyperbolic: I think there is a correlation between oral culture and authoritarianism, between a less literate population and strongman leaders. When people don’t evaluate ideas separate from their speakers, power gravitates to the most magnetic voice in a room.