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to the heavy dependence on reading and writing as we have now grown
cyberspace. In such cultures, teaching and learning are still based primarily
on memorization and recitation. People share knowledge by telling stories,
proverbs, riddles, etc. In many of such cultures, the collective memory of society
resides with Griots who memorize the history and tell it when required. Hence,
the history is accessed primarily by performance. In some other cultures the
collective memory is held within society at large based on an elaborate system
of cognomens in which people are named and described according to the lives
and times of their forbearers.
These cognomens are usually stories of both valiance and villainy. Among the
Zulu of southern Africa it is called Izithakazelo and among the Yoruba of West
Africa it is called Oriki. In the Yoruba culture for example, children get some
parts of their oriki recited to them at least once a day. Parents and other elders
in the homestead, particularly mothers would go into a session of recitation
of a child’s oriki in response to a simple good morning greeting from the child.
The oriki is also freely recited, both to children and adults during ceremonies
and sometimes, just in acknowledgement of important achievements or in
a bid to encourage prosperity. This way, various portions of the collective
memory of the whole community is held in the brains of individual members of
the community and is regularly rehearsed in performance for the purposes of
retrieval whenever needed.
Despite the known weaknesses of the human brain as a store of information,
the sacred texts of the Ifa divination system of the Yoruba still remains largely
in oral form. Even though some portions have been written, the bulk of it still
resides mainly in the brains of Ifa scholars as an oral scripture. These sacred
texts contain the knowledge of Yoruba philosophy, medicine and many other
relevant sciences in elaborate poetry. The knowledge contained in these poems
is organized in an equally elaborate system of information look-up based on
binary mathematics and probability theory.
How then do we accommodate such traditions that are based mainly on
orature in cyberspace How do we use multimedia to assist such cultures
with documenting their histories and their knowledge of their environment in
media that are more appropriate than the human brain If we are to develop
cyberspace as a truly multilingual knowledge space, is it pertinent to ensure
that cultures that still learn by memorization and recitation also have access
to the information superhighway Apart from giving such cultures access
to cyberspace, it is also necessary to offer modern technology as a means of
documenting and mobilizing the knowledge that is otherwise held in the brains
of mere mortals.
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