Orality means speech culture, talking culture, the condition of living in an oral culture. You’ll find me referring to orality a lot in this blog because I think that we can learn a great deal about the ‘conversational’ nature of social media and Web 2.0 by studying the conversational dynamics of oral cultures. If we do this we discover important truths about what kinds of conversations work online and why, but more significantly still, we learn about how and why we are beginning to reorganize our world in response to those new and profoundly subversive conversational dynamics.It’s my very definite contention that certain technologies are so potent as organizing tools that we rearrange our societies, our economies, our landscapes - our civilizations - in order to maximize our ability to use these technologies to increase productivity (and ultimately survival) on a personal and collective level. I’m not saying that any one person designs a plan and the rest of society implements it, but rather that we rearrange ourselves the same way ants do if someone knocks over their anthill. It’s in our nature as animals to strive to build bigger, better civilizations, bigger, better anthills. That’s what evolution is all about.

Cars are a perfect example of a technology that when it emerged it was so potent that we reorganized our cities, our economies, our landscapes, our nations, our families, in response to its extraordinary transportational abilities. Of course car pollution may kill us in the end, but that’s a rational perspective that has had a tough time gaining traction in the face of evolutionary imperatives that impel us towards ease and efficiency.

Either way, no technology is as potent as storytelling. It’s how every species survives - by trading information about risk and reward. Storytelling is the killer app of evolution. Without stories, nothing survives. Not bacteria. Not bees. Not us. And as humans our #1 storytelling tool is language.

The thing that we sometimes forget, however, is that human language is not abstract. It can only be manifested as a specific communications technology, such as the human voice. Or in print. Or as hypertext. And my analysis of the structure and purpose of Web 2.0 technologies is based on the principle that each of these three language technologies invites its users to reorganize their worlds differently. The language of the body, the language of the book and the language of binary data are very, very different beasts. In future posts I will go into plenty of detail about how they are different (or in some cases similar) and why it is so urgent for designers, businesspeople, activists and others to grasp their interrelatedness in the 21st century. It’s a long story that I hope will interest you (if it does read further into this blog) but I want to conclude this first post on my this crucial topic by articulating how each of these three communication technologies (oral, literate and digital language) differs with respect to ‘conversations’ at the most fundamental level.

If we understand that speech is not a given but a technology, then it follows that like all technologies it only works under certain conditions. When does human speech work? When more than one person is present in the same place at the same time. If those conditions aren’t met you can’t have a conversation, the technology fails. If I’m sitting on a bench and tell you something, but you aren’t actually there, then you can’t just show up later and expect the technology off speech to work. It won’t. Sound is evanescent, it doesn’t last. What this means is that speech is inherently ‘dialogical’, but its dialogues are bound by time and space.

Writing on the other hand transcends time and space. You can write something and send it across the world by post or in a book. And you can read what people wrote thousands of years ago. That’s a big difference. Writing is waaaaaaay more efficient as a tool for social organization than speech. And that’s why historically, wherever they met, literate cultures massacred and overwhelmed oral cultures (tanks trumped horses, pipelines whipped calabashes, etc.). But unlike orality, literacy is not dialogical. In fact when you are reading or writing you want privacy and isolation above all. So literacy is a monological technology (a series of monologues) that transcends time and space. And as the most literate society in history it should not therefore be surprising that we are also the most individualistic society in history.

Finally, let’s look at why networked digital communication is so threatening to literate society. Like literacy, online language transcends time and space, but like orality it is also dialogical. This makes it vastly more efficient than literacy as an organizing tool, and we are beginning to rearrange our society accordingly.

To sum up then:

orality = dialogues bound by time and space
literacy = monologues that transcend time and space
digital culture = dialogues that transend time and space

This simple equation should also make clear why I think that there is so much to learn about digital conversations from oral conversations - they are both diaological! And therefore the social, economic and community dynamics of each are in many ways proving to be very similar. In future posts I’ll give many, many concrete examples of those similarities and I’ll invite you to seek out and document your own as well. It’s the clearest way to grasp the nature of Web 2.0.

Til next time…

Why did I call my new blog The Talking Shop? Lots of reasons.

1) It’s a place to ‘talk shop’. In my case that means it’s a place to engage in enlightening conversations about the past, present and future of interactive networked media.

2) It’s also a place to celebrate and critique businesses that engage in online conversations, i.e. talking shops. This is important to me because I’m a big advocate of integrating blogging and other social media into business as part of what I call the ‘conversation economy’. I think shops should talk.

3) I’m a communications consultant and this is my shop. I’m selling talk - mine and yours and theirs. This blog is the storefront where I display my wares.

I hope you like it here in my new shop. Though I’ve really just opened. This is the quiet time when the shop owner turns on the lights and opens the blinds, before the hustle and bustle of the business day begins. But I have a hunch this place will soon be busy, bubbling with babble. So stick around and share your thoughts. Talk some shop. Shop some talk at The Talking Shop.

In the physical world, a home is a place to return to. A place to be from. Home is not just where the heart is but above all where the heart is safe. Home has sturdy walls that keep the world out. Home is a sanctuary. Home has a front door that is generally kept locked. In a bricks-and-mortar home, admittance is a privilege, not a right.

A virtual home is different. This is my virtual home and it is open to all. It is, especially, open to you. Come on in! This is a home where visitors are always welcome to hang their hat, leave a comment, join the conversation. I’ll do my best to be a gracious host.

I’ve got another online home at 76design, where I work. There you’ll find a homepage whose motto is borrowed from the Spanish proverb: Mi Casa Su Casa. At 76design we say: My Homepage is Your Homepage! The 76design homepage showcases a custom interactive corkboard called Bored of Cork, born of the coding brilliance of my 76design workmates and pals Brett Tackaberry and Steve Palmer. It’s really worth a peek. And when you’re there, don’t forget to post a note! We’re always home!

Hi. Welcome to my new blog, The Talking Shop. This blog is all about the past, present and future of social media. It’s about the conversation economy and the power of peer-to-peer storytelling. It’s about how to make media, make meaning and make money all at the same time!

Here’s why I’m starting this blog now: Recently I was telling my boss, Joe Thornley, who is a passionate advocate for social media in the world of public relations, that he should book me to speak at one of the industry events he organizes. Joe’s response surprised me. “But you don’t blog”, he replied, as if that said it all.

I pointed out to Joe that blogging isn’t the only medium available in which to discuss or promote social media. But Joe was singularly uninterested in the fact that I had published a book providing a historical context to social media, called Digitopia Blues – Race, Technology and the American Voice (Banff Centre Press, 2002). Nor did he seem to care about the book’s impressive reviews: “Digitopia Blues begs to be read, and what’s more it begs to be discussed” (Georgia Straight, Vancouver); “Digitopia Blues is a cutting edge, highly recommended look at an American popular culture of the future.” (Midwest Book Review). Joe also cared little for the fact that I had been touring a one-man show about contemporary media culture called Two Million Years of Technology to equally solid reviews.

No. The only thing that mattered to Joe was that I didn’t blog. (Actually, I did have a GigBlog for a while, but shut it down.) Joe’s a very direct guy, and very smart, and in the short time I’ve worked for him I’ve learned to respect his opinion. And to Joe, blogging is simply where it’s at.

I’m not one for arguing lost causes. I’m all about dialogue and solutions and going forward. So rather than trying to prove myself by my past accomplishments I took the bait. Because if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? And after all, maybe he’s right.

So let’s get it on. Welcome to my new blog. I’ll be posting a lot, so grab the RSS feed while you’re here, and maybe drop me a line. It’s going to be a wild ride, and the more of us there are aboard, the louder we’ll be. Because The Talking Shop is ready to make some noise!