Monotheism, an effect of the alphabet[81], played a key role in the emergence of objective truth.

The absolute truth, however, was long available only to the learned few—until printing brought uniformity.

Preliterate truths were conditional and negotiated. Anyone could push for more gains. These weren’t lies—situational truth was the only form of truth.

Objective truth did not exist before literacy. Right and wrong were defined situationally, tested by outcomes, and stored in tribal memory.

Orality and literacy differ in how they coordinate human actions. Orality synchronizes humans through immediate perception of each other. Literacy synchronizes humans through shared conceptions, enabling more people to think and act together across space and time. Digital orality synchronizes human perception through customized and viral delivery

since digital reality isn’t physical, users cannot actually sense it—so they feel it. Digital “lived experience” is shaped by feelings, not sensations. A new sensorium is emerging, based on feelings—on “sensing” others.

The detachment of literacy enabled a point-of-view, as opposed to the oralist point-of-being, to use Derrick de Kerckhove’s dichotomy.

Literacy made humans think about things that are not at hand, thus withdrawing the mind from sensory-situational immersion. This created affordances for abstract thinking, classification, generalization, theorizing, structuring, and pondering ideal Forms such as beauty or truth.

In orality, knowledge can be validated only by personal experience or tribal myth.