The Post-Literate Society

The rise of AI chatbots represents more than a technological shift—it's accelerating a 21st century oral culture revival where dialogue replaces text as the dominant mode of thinking and communication, with profound implications for how we process information, evaluate truth, and distribute power.

Quotes

"The wrapper is the thing." — Jasmine Sun, on how ChatGPT's conversational interface matters as much as the underlying AI technology

"Talk is cheap, thinking is hard. That's a thousand-year-old truth, and it'll live a thousand more." — Jasmine Sun

"Trump appears to have understood that the U.S. is transitioning from a text-based to an oral culture. I don't mean by this that a commitment to text will disappear, only that it has become a minority practice, once again a mark of membership in a social elite." — Danielle Allen, political scientist