Every year, I try to read a couple of books on media ecology. Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman have been companions over the years, in part because their observations remain astute, even decades after they wrote. I had to read Antón Barba-Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making twice, not only because of the depth of its insights but also because of the concentration it demanded.
Books like these are worth pondering because they help us see the why behind so much of what’s happening in our world—how media affects politics and polarization, cultural trends, and more. It’s good to pick up books by Jonathan Haidt or Jean Twenge and look at the immediate downstream effects of the iPhone, for example, but at times it’s better to swim upstream so we can set our current moment in a broader historical context.
That’s what Andrey Mir, a Russian immigrant to Canada and prolific writer in media ecology, seeks to do in his book Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect. Mir makes a provocative case: Since the turn of the millennium, civilization has undergone a seismic shift, similar to the epochal changes when literacy displaced orality.
Oral vs. Literate Cultures
To understand Mir’s point—and why it matters for our digital moment—we need to travel back in time. Before the invention of the alphabet and the proliferation of writing on tablets and scrolls, historical truth and moral expectations were handed down orally, oriented around tribal identity and the leader’s charisma. It’s not just that the era of orality was about speaking and listening rather than reading and writing. The real difference, Mir says, is between “immersion” and “detachment.”
In oral cultures, sensory input intermingled in an immersive space, habituating the mind to process varied sense data simultaneously. Once the alphabet took root and literacy spread, a space opened up for quiet pondering, interior reflection, and abstract philosophy. Truth no longer depended solely on tribal tradition but became attached to a permanent medium. Literacy singled out vision from the other senses and established linear patterns of thought, reinforced by the flow of text on the page. For the first time, truth could be debated, preserved, or rejected across generations. A canon of truth emerged—abstract and absolute.
The spread of digital communication technologies, Mir argues, has brought an end to the era dominated by literacy. We now face a new hybrid he calls “digital orality”:
Digital orality is the instant exchange by clicks. It’s a completely new mode of humans’ interaction with the environment and each other. Digital orality is simultaneous and impulsive like instant oral exchange but recordable, shareable, and transportable like writing and print.
Digital communication, by embedding text in a hodgepodge of graphics and sounds, resurrects the “oral” world of immersion and impulse. But it doesn’t eliminate literacy altogether. Instead, it leaves us with a hybrid—a world of oral exchange made permanent online.
Truth by Likes
In this environment, the notion of truth undergoes a shift. Impulsive and relational like oral cultures, yet still recordable and shareable like print, truth becomes personal again: “my truth” or “your truth.” Credibility depends less on accuracy and more on the speaker’s identity. As Mir puts it, “Two plus two equals four is doubted if said by Hitler.”
Mir also notes something I’ve observed among young people: the assumption that a large number of subscribers or followers signals legitimacy. Authority is conferred by attention, not by alignment with any enduring standard of truth:
On social media, one’s “likes” correlate with what one believes is true. And vice versa: “liked” means “true.” The more “liked” something is, the “truer” it is for everyone who liked it. Truth has a variable value; there is no absolute truth in this epistemological paradigm. . . . Truth is a referendum by likes.
World Oriented Toward ‘Tribal Truth’
This gets to something I’ve discussed with Samuel James, author of Digital Liturgies, and Collin Hansen: The internet and the rise of social media, though they provide opportunities for the spread of Christian teaching, are shaped in ways that undermine the very concept of objective, agreed-on truth. Those who aspire to prioritize “truth over tribe” are operating in a world where the tribe itself determines truth.
Online, even as strange theories rise and fall, tribal orthodoxy exerts more pressure than ever. Whether political tribes on the right or left, or niche online subcultures, inconvenient truths can be waved away. We’ve seen this in recent presidential administrations—from the Trump administration’s “alternative facts” to the herdlike reluctance among insiders to acknowledge President Biden’s decline. Malcolm Gladwell, for instance, recently admitted he felt cowed into silence on a panel about trans athletes in women’s sports, in part because of the tribal peer pressure at work. Mir explains why:
The collectivism of doxa, the social power of orthodoxy, is now technologically amplified by viral distribution and, most importantly, by everyone watching over the compliance of everyone due to the instant exposure of everyone to everyone on social media. It is becoming harder to withstand the “peer pressure” of the tribe when objective truth does not align with the truths of the tribe.
People now vote for truth with clicks, which are the digital surrogates of cheering at a bardic performance. Truth is again up for negotiation. “Tribal solidarity” is back as a moral regulative, suppressing the literate moral imperative of truth.
In the literate age, Aristotle said, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” In the age of digital orality, Mir suggests, the order has flipped: “Truth is dear to me, but dearer still is Plato.” And perhaps we’re all more conditioned now to say something similar: “Truth is dear to me, but dearer still is my allegiance to this leader, my party, my denomination, my online tribe.”
Digital orality rejects absolute truth, affecting even science and jurisprudence. A scholar needs to adjust their methodology to get preapproved results. Lady Justice needs to lift her blindfold and carefully watch what she is weighing. Truth is dear but dearer still are right people, so pick the right truth.
Media Ecology and the Singularity
Mir is most persuasive when he shows how small changes in media can reorder an entire ecosystem. Introducing a few dozen wolves to Yellowstone led to a renaissance of biodiversity. Meanwhile, China’s attempt to stamp out sparrows caused a locust resurgence that contributed to famine. Similarly, the iPhone has rearranged everyday life, its effects cascading across society in ways we’re still only beginning to trace. Human agency matters, but we mustn’t underestimate the influence of technologies, however small they may seem.
Mir is at his weakest when speculating about the future. He foresees what some technologists are aiming for: the Singularity, when artificial intelligence gains something like self-consciousness and human beings become redundant:
AI that acquires something akin to self-consciousness either through self-awakening or through merging with a human will via a cognitive interface . . . will signify the Singularity. . . . The technological imperative leaves humankind no choice: singularize or die.
Yikes! A nonhuman age awaits us—or, in my view, subhuman. Even antihuman. Here, Mir sounds like a determinist, as if breathlessly awaiting the next technological dawn.
Remaining Faithful in a Digital-Oral World
Where does all this leave Christians today? If truth is once again tribal, negotiable, and defined by likes, how do we remain faithful?
First, it’s encouraging to see renewed attention given to the “rule of faith”—the ancient ecclesial guardrails around how we interpret what God has revealed to us in his written Word. In a world where “truth” is crowdsourced, Christians must embody a countercultural confidence that the gospel isn’t up for referendum.
Second, we’ll stand out in our world if we cultivate habits of patience and contemplation. Literacy once trained people to pause, reflect, and ponder. In a digital world designed for impulse and reaction, Christians should resist the pull of immediacy and embrace practices that form us in wisdom rather than outrage. This will mean, for some (perhaps many), stepping away altogether from certain online spaces where our intuitions are too quickly malformed.
Third, the church should be known as a community of integrity and courage. Tribal peer pressure is real, but so is the strength of fellowship among believers who prize truth over applause. The church is the pillar and foundation of the truth, and thus we speak what’s true, no matter how inconvenient, even when everything in our world makes it easier to spread half-truths or falsehoods.
Finally, we can offer hope. The distortions of digital orality don’t do away with the desire for truth that’s solid, steady, and trustworthy. In a world where everything feels fluid and unsure, we point not to “my truth” or “your truth” but to the Truth—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
If you would like my future articles sent to your email, as well as a curated list of books, podcasts, and helpful links I find online, enter your address.