Beyond the Written Word: AI’s Role in Reaching Oral Cultures

So let's start out with Don's PhD.

I'm going to give it over to Jonathan now because Don's PhD is in an area I never heard of before.

Yeah.

So, Don, I believe your PhD is in orality,

right? It is.

And a lot of people think morality, but it's not morality.

It's orality.

So tell us, what does orality mean? You know, it's just recognizing that people get information in a variety of different ways.

And if you go back in history, well, first of all, I just had a grandson born last Friday.

Henry is new into the world.

And you know what Henry is? Henry is an oral learner.

Right now, Henry is an oral learner.

He will be an oral learner for the next few years.

Everything he learns will be through observation and what he pulls into his senses.

He won't be a reader.

He's going to be really smart, no doubt, but he will not be reading in his first few years of life.

And we all, those of us who have learned to be literate, have acquired that ability to take in information from a non-oral modality.

But the reality is all of us at one point were oral learners.

And my research was in how we could use the same principles we use for Bible translation.

clear, accurate, natural.

How can you take that and to make sure that Bible stories, as we're talking and we're sharing with oral cultures, how can you do that in such a way that you make sure that the story is clear and accurate and natural?

So can you help us understand the difference between an oral culture and a culture-based with a high emphasis on literacy.

I don't know if that, that's not something that we typically think as much about in an AI super tech bubble.

So we have a lot to learn from people working in this sort of linguistics, cultural setting in how we can apply these

things.