I was reading an article about an upcoming video game, because I do that sort of thing. For those who didn’t already know, I’m a bit of a nerd.
Anyhoo, one of the thrusts of the piece was that many of us are already cyborgs. Technology has changed us and will continue to change us. The most profound instances may also be the least physically evident. In this case I’m talking about the way we think.
There was a time that we had to remember silly little things like people’s birthdays, important phone numbers, bank account numbers – stupid crap like that. For those who live in techno-industrialized societies, those days are long gone. Internet-enabled phones and social networking have thoroughly eliminated that.
On the one hand, this makes many things possible that never were before. But what does that mean for us as a species? Do we ultimately become an internet appliance ourselves, devoid of direction or function if the network goes down? Plato, who died around 347 BC, seems to think we will.
for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
– Socrates, speaking to Phaedrus in Plato’s “Phaedrus”
Here Socrates is quoting a fictional conversation between the Egyptian god Theuth and Egyptian King Thamus. Theuth is discussing his invention of letters, which will give the Egyptians better memories, and that this will make them wiser. Thamus disagrees, as reflected in the quote above. His argument (which is Socrates argument in the dialogue and Plato’s argument in writing the dialogue *insert “Inception” joke here*) is that this will not give wisdom because it creates permanent, but external, memories.
Wisdom, in his estimation, must arise from an internalized memory or in his words “an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner”.
Words, and the ultimate modern invocation of them – the internet, create a vast and readily accessible external memory. We have a vast store of knowledge – and no idea what any of it means.
I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
