Entry Point#1: reading & orality
Amid Faljaoui published a post alluding to the disappearance of writing. To illustrate his observation, the columnist invites us to look at how our day unfolds: podcast, video, voice message, etc… Even generative devices can simulate a spoken conversation.
He notes that text has been the great vehicle of complex ideas, and that this may be changing, notably because of a “fascinating” idea put forward by The Economist: we are gradually returning to a civilisation of the oral.
Two consequences are developed in the face of this return of orality:
Orality modifies the message, not in substance, but in form.
The change would come (also) from our phone, which imposes a necessarily short format on us and would then bring about a form of cognitive atrophy, including the loss of the habit of following a long line of reasoning.
From these hypotheses, the columnist concludes:
Tomorrow, being a good speaker will be valued more highly than knowing how to write, at a time when even those on bad terms with writing churn out perfectly correct texts (thanks ChatGPT).
This reflection is set out in a 368-word post. It is shared on social media. Given the regularity of the publications and their form, one may wonder about the authenticity of this content, even though its substance is interesting. In other words, are generative devices used as writing assistance? I think so, but it does not much matter, because the object of my commentary is not to return to the questions of transparency one may hope for with such content. (On this subject, see in particular Authenticity and sincerity. The aporia of transparency).
This reflection is moreover dangerous, because it leads to unfairly valuing one skill over another. And since this valuation will be constituted, as always, within a market logic, we have a role to play, collectively and individually, in preferring good writers to good speakers.
To do so, we must, I believe, set this observation alongside the work of Maryanne Wolf in order to understand why the consequence Faljaoui draws must be rejected. The return to orality is not a good or a bad thing in itself. It is the disappearance of our relationship to writing that is the problem, and the conclusion he draws from it seems to me far too limited. Let me explain.
First, let us make clear that reading is not a natural process. Stanislas Dehaene speaks of “neuronal recycling” to designate this faculty we have of using “areas originally dedicated to the recognition of objects and faces… to decipher letters.” There is therefore genuine learning work required to acquire this skill, which necessarily takes time and a certain amount of effort, much like the effort made by the author of a text that makes us think.
Next, this work of understanding graphic and visual representations of letters must take place very quickly, indeed as quickly as possible, in order to function correctly and to establish a connection between several systems (visual and semantic in particular). To do so, we need attention. Well, well… You may already see the link with screens and the flow of information we have to face? This is where I agree with Faljaoui as to the role played by our smartphones. In fact, this characteristic is affordance, and we should be wary of it.
Faced with the acceleration of our pace of life, reading a (printed) book or a text (newspaper, article, …) is a moment that is becoming increasingly rare for many. I therefore share the fear of losing this habitus of long reasoning.
Maryanne Wolf has reflected on this subject and proposes the notion of deep reading. It is defined as “the space where another reveals to you your own thoughts, and where a kind of epiphany, of revelation, can take place”.
As Amid Faljaoui notes, in a book one can devote all one’s attention to reading and develop analogies between the meanings of words we already know and the new meanings appearing in the text. You can stop reading, think, and question what you have just read, then resume reading once you have “digested” the information. Of course, the reading process does not stop at simply developing analogies. It is also a way of consolidating information and/or knowledge.
Finally, the interest of reading is that by making the effort to understand another, I understand myself better.
We should therefore not rejoice at a return to orality, still less content ourselves with texts generated by devices. We must cherish and protect these moments of confrontation with ourselves through reading, because if you weigh the two against each other, the path of orality leads us to the impoverishment of the thoughts that reading makes possible.
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