This week I didn’t manage to take that many notes during the un-lecture, however one topic towards the end of the un-lecture really struck me as blatantly obvious but fascinating, and it was in relation to Adrian’s word game example. When he asked which creature was the odd one out out of the kangaroo, koala, kookaburra and possum.. I thought to myself well obviously it isn’t possum because that’s too obvious, but the thing is.. it is only obvious because I am literate. Here I am thinking that it is a trick question when really Adrian was trying to show the effect that print media has had on knowledge.

I had never really considered the idea of an ‘oral culture’- a community where communication is solely communicated by spoken word, where all knowledge is transmitted through way of speaking, listening, gesturing, singing and dancing. It seems like a difficult concept nowadays as I sit here staring deep into my laptop screen, however there are still communities out there living in such a way, for example on North Sentinal Island, where locals have been virtually untouched by modern civilization.

These locals may think that there are certain members of their community who have infinite knowledge.. as they know ‘everything’ there is to know about their community. However what we know today is that nobody can ever know EVERYTHING, no matter how high their ATAR score is..