WikiAsOralCulture

Context : OnWiki

SunirShah's Meatball:OpenAcademics paper (which explores some similar areas to AcademiaVsNewMedia) has an interesting claim :

Wikis, editable web-sites well-suited for collaborative writing, exhibit an oral culture through text. As such, they will facilitate an oral and tribal academy, as they combine both the print culture's text-based dialectic with oral tradition's memetic natural selection.

Certainly the "tribalism" sounds right (if by tribalism you mean small self-selecting networks of people with common interests who closely work and hang out together - though note ModernTribes caveat.) But the orality?

"memetic natural selection" reminds me of TheFlowInternet. But how close is this to orality exactly? Particularly Sunir's claim of oralities conservatism. (OnConservatism)