Secondary Orality

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According to scholar Walter J. Ong, pre-literate and regressed-literate social groups organize memory differently than people who read. I learned this in the 2007 New Yorker article "Twilight of the Books" by Caleb Crain.
According to Ong, the best way to preserve ideas in the absence of writing is to “think memorable thoughts,” whose zing insures their transmission.
Anybody can be a regressed literate through different life stages. Adults don't always realize they should try reading glasses. Some get eye injuries. A friend with early Parkinson's disease got Lasik surgery twice and may need it a third time.

Parents of young children rely on TV and radio/smart speakers while their hands and eyes are occupied caring for infants. But TikTok is not a replacement for newspapers and local news under FCC perview. TikTok is all video and no text, and the messages there can more easily bypass viewers' critical thinking faculties than news found on newspaper sites.

Speed reading modules used to be free on the Internet. I used them in my late 20's and the training enabled me to stop "subvocalization" that slowed down, downright hindered my reading comprehension. Many kids today are being falsely diagnosed with dyslexia. They're Secondary Orality citizens, depending on video for any and all information consumption, but many don't have to be. Medium of Discovery:
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This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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