Socrates mainly focuses on the fact that writing takes away a person’s intelligence but he never once disucusses how people would share their views or knowledge when they die. How would we learn how to cook new recipes or learn about the make-up of a cell if the written word didn’t exist? Socrates only speaks about the negative aspects of the written word and not the positive ones. Socrates says, “…once written down they are tossed about anywhere among those who do and and among those who do not understand them,” (97), but he does not mention anything about people in the future who may come across this speech and completely understand it and be able to relate to it.
Nicholas Carr agrees with this idea in “The Oral World vs. The Written Word”. He even says “But literacy ‘is absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art, and indeed for the explanation of language…” (3). Nicholas Carr also mentions that during Plato’s days poetry was the main source of knowledge.
Nicholas Carr’s argument in “Is Google Making Us Stupid” makes an immense amount of sense. While reading about the author’s tendency to skim written works I found myself skimming. The internet has definitely changed society’s way of thinking. Many of my peers do not read unless its required of them. Nicholas Carr writes, “the more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing,” (2), which makes sense because everything on the internet is short and to the point. The more time a person spends on the internet, the less likely they are going to be interested in reading something that is long and drawn out. Since the internet is becoming more popular with society every day, the rate for voluntary reading is greatly decreasing.
2 responses so far ↓
m.ruiz // Feb 4th 2015 at 4:17 pm
Everything on the internet is not short and to the point. I do not think you can just say that the rate of voluntary reading is greatly decreasing without any real evidence.
I think it is cool how you mention that Socrates only focuses on the negative aspects of reading.
p.moran // Feb 4th 2015 at 11:31 pm
I do agree that Socrates is only focusing on the bad aspects of the writing and the alphabet and nowadays if we did not have that advantage I think we would have been worst than now. We would have not the opportunity to get some ancient text and some other knowledge.
He only spoke a bad the bad consequences of that “new technology” because he though that with conversation we would have been able to transmit all what you learned to children, nephews, nieces.. etc and therefore you would have to listen, to everyone and try to remember everything therefore you will be a greater thinker.
Good reflection by Socrates but he is leaving aside the fact that we hare human beins and we have limits.
My question is are we becoming more lazy for do not read that much books or learn from the “dialogues” or are we becoming smarter with the creation of “new technologies” that couple years ago we would not imagine that the human being could create that sophisticated inventions as Internet, Smartphones… etc.