“Phaedrus” is a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus. Here Socrates argues that, writing makes human being unwise. He told Phaedrus a story about an Egyptian God Theuth and Egyptian king Thamus. Theuth first discovered the use of letters in Egypt. He showed his invention to king Thamus and said that, “This will make the Egyptians wiser and given them better memories; for this is the cure of forgetfulness and folly (96)”. Thamus said, “This invention will create forgetfulness in learner’s souls, because they will not use their memories (96)”. I agree with Theuth’s statement that writing makes us wise and makes our memory better. Writing does not create forgetfulness in human rather it helps people to remember. When we read something, for example: any article or poem and write it down then that thing remains on our mind for a long time and whenever we look at the writing, it reminds us about that thing. This is how writing helps us to remember things. In addition, today we are able to know about Socrates and his great thoughts only because of writing. Plato wrote down Socrates conversations, his thoughts and opinions, and that’s why we are being able to know about him.
Plato wrote about Socrates point of view about writing. According to Socrates, “writing threatens to make us shallower thinkers, preventing us from achieving the intellectual depth that leads to wisdom”. In Socrates view, writing is making us shallow thinkers and preventing us from achieving true wisdom. Plato is a great and thoughtful writer, he wrote about Socrates negative opinion about writing. Socrates had this conversation with Phaedrus centuries ago. Today we can read it only because of Plato’s writing. If Plato would not write it down then we could not know about his point of view and his opinion. From this, one thing has proved that “written word has more advantage than spoken word”.
Carr argues that Google has changed the way we think and it is ruining our concentration power. Nowadays, we have become very dependent on Google. Whenever we need to search something, we simply go to Google, and search it in few minutes. Google does everything in a fast and easy way, and we have become use to with this system. Now we want to do everything like this, in an easy and simple way. Usually, it takes two to three days to read a storybook. Now there are short summaries of long stories available on Google, and most of us prefer to read those summaries. Those short Google articles or summaries are not as details as a book. In addition, when we read a book, then we can feel the writer’s words, his thoughts, and it influences us to think like him. However, when we read an article on Google we do not feel the same way. In addition, looking at the computer screen for a long time makes us tired, and spoils our concentration.