Winds of Time: Digital Media and the Return to Speech

They immediately went back to the well of established artists well into their 50s. Even that wasn’t entirely risk-free. In 2012, Madonna invited M.I.A. to the stage, where the artist flipped off the camera, reigniting controversy around the halftime show.

So, a little over a decade later when it was announced Kendrick Lamar would perform at the halftime show in the midst of a provocative top hit, it didn’t take a strategist to foresee some trouble. And lo and behold, he performed that song. Except it didn’t lead to FCC investigations and media uproar.

Instead, it became one of the most talked-about moments of the event. The streams went up and the audience loved it.

It wasn’t just media and entertainment getting more comfortable with controversy.

When a McDonald’s executive became the target of online criticism after appearing less than enthusiastic while eating a burger, conventional thinking would have suggested competitors should stay out of it. Let the internet move on. Don’t create sympathy for your rival. Instead, Burger King responded with its own executive excitedly devouring a Whopper. There was no backlash. Traffic reportedly increased.

 

 

Even corporate leaders are leaning into behavior that once would have seemed unprofessional. Executives are swearing more frequently on calls. Politicians increasingly use casual, conversational language online. Rather than damaging credibility, many see these behaviors as signs of authenticity and conviction.

Meanwhile, audiences consistently tell survey researchers they want original content. Yet franchises, sequels, and familiar characters continue to dominate box office revenue and streaming rankings.

Time and time again, people say one thing but respond to something entirely different.

For many business leaders, marketers, and strategists, these outcomes feel wrong. They contradict the instincts developed in a world built around professionalism, objectivity, and carefully crafted messaging. But what if the issue isn’t changing consumer preferences? Instead, what if the way people process information is changing?

 

A Theory: Digital Tools Are Making Us More Oral

This view was articulated most famously by Marshall McLuhan, who believed in a form of technological determinism called media determinism:  where media technology (print, telegram, radio) is impactful beyond the content they produce. They change how we communicate with each other as we align to the specialties of each medium.

Decades before social media, livestreaming, and AI, McLuhan argued that our digital tools have changed us by making society more oral, or conversational.

And because so many of our communication mediums (radio, Slack, streaming) take the form of back-and-forth conversations, it’s pushing to the forefront behaviors and traits that were far more common before reading and writing arrived on the scene.

To better understand this evolution, McLuhan’s former student, Walter Ong, looked backward rather than forward. In his book Orality and Literacy, Ong examined how people communicated before reading and writing became widespread. He asked readers to imagine a world where nothing could be written down, looked up, or stored externally. Knowledge lived entirely within people, passed from one generation to the next through stories, conversation, and memory.

 

In Oral Cultures, Knowledge Has to Perform

If knowledge only survives when people remember it, then it must be memorable.

The Odyssey, for example, wasn’t originally experienced as a text. It was performed. A storyteller could draw upon familiar characters and well-known stories, bringing them into the moment and adapting them to the audience in front of them.

Thinking was also highly situational. Knowledge wasn’t valuable because it was theoretically true. It was valuable if it helped someone understand the world around them, solve a problem, or navigate a social situation.

At the same time, oral cultures could be surprisingly competitive. Ong described them as agonistic, meaning they were shaped by conflict. Knowledge was still power, and power was demonstrated by drawing on the right proverb, telling the story that perfectly explained a situation, or responding effectively in the moment. People were responding to what was getting them the most attention.

Sound familiar?

Today’s algorithms reward many of the same behaviors. Conflict attracts attention. Bold personalities stand out. Familiar stories resonate. The incentives, then and now, are remarkably similar.

 

What Literacy Changed

Writing fundamentally altered humanity’s relationship with knowledge. Ong described literacy as separating “the knower from the known.” Once information could be written down, it no longer needed to remain attached to the person communicating it. Knowledge could exist independently on a page. That shift created enormous advantages. Writing promotes abstraction, logical thinking, and analysis. It allows ideas to be preserved, studied, and tested across generations.

But literacy also creates distance.

When reading, people are removed from their surroundings. When writing, the audience isn’t sitting in front of them. The writer must anticipate questions, clarify assumptions, and organize ideas without immediate feedback.

For centuries, institutions were built around these strengths. Documents became trusted because they represented thought. Reports, plans, and strategies signaled that someone had taken the time to sit down, think through a problem, and communicate it clearly. The written artifact became proof of the thinking behind it.

 

Then the Internet Changed the Equation

Radio and television began bringing some elements of oral culture back into society. They reintroduced sound, personality, and shared experiences.

But the internet changed things more dramatically.

The moment audiences could respond instantly, communication stopped being an isolated, one-way activity and became one large conversation. Now, by being able to converse with it, we’ve returned knowledge back to the knower.

Today, when encountering information online, people often evaluate the messenger before the message.  Do I trust this person? Do I believe they understand what they’re talking about? Do they feel authentic? In many cases, those questions are answered before the facts themselves are considered.

 

The Opportunity Ahead

Some of these changes can feel uncomfortable. Conflict attracts attention. Familiar stories outperform original ideas. Personalities often carry more weight than institutions. For those raised in a culture shaped by reading and writing, these trends can feel like a step backward.

McLuhan offered a different perspective. New media doesn’t simply replace what came before. Instead, it retrieves older ways of communicating and thinking. When viewed through that lens, many of today’s seemingly contradictory behaviors begin to make more sense.

If digital tools are making us more oral, then the popularity of conflict, authenticity, familiar stories, and personality-driven communication may not be random cultural shifts at all. They may simply reflect a world where knowledge is becoming more conversational and increasingly tied to the people sharing it.

The question, then, isn’t whether literacy or orality is better. It’s how we can combine the strengths of both.

 

The perspectives shared here originate from Ben Magnuson’s Assembly 2026 presentation. To hear the complete conversation, watch the session, linked below.