LLMs and hyper-orality
original article by gordon brander: https://newsletter.squishy.computer/p/llms-and-hyper-orality - published in: feb 1, 2023
my highlights:
Way back in the 70s, Walter J. Ong and Marshall McLuhan were predicting that electronic networks would reboot oral culture, and we can see this happening through social media. Memetic snowclone phrasing, communal sensemaking… It seems likely that LLMs will massively amplify and accelerate this ongoing effect, just as they amplify and accelerate the ongoing flood of information from the internet
What else? So McLuhan has this interesting thinking framework called the media tetrad.
It asks four questions: what does the new medium enhance, what does it make obsolete, what does it retrieve from our past, and finally, how might it reverse and the effects flip when pushed to extremes.