Re: [Air-L] history of Plato's Phaedrus as example of moral / media panic?
You might also want to look into Eric Havelock's *Preface to Plato <https://monoskop.org/images/0/0d/Havelock_Eric_A_Preface_to_Plato.pdf>*. Ong draws on him a lot but I'm less familiar with it myself so I'm not sure how that argument developed. On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 2:26 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
Thanks in turn for the reference! And you, along with Mark Johns, may well be onto something here - somewhere between Ong and Postman at least some version of the mythos becomes familiar to folk ... and somewhere along the line it gets appropriated, if in a (necessarily) simplified version, into discourse on moral / media panics. But where / when / and by whom?
Again, just curious - and concerned that I may be missing an important set of arguments somewhere.
best, - c.
On 24/04/2019 20:12, Aaron Hung wrote:
What a fascinating discussion! And coincidentally, I came across this just last night when reading /Paper /by Mark Kurlansky.
In terms of how this notion of moral panic has been attributed, fairly or not and accurate or not, to Plato, I trace my own familiarity to this argument to my first introduction to Walter Ong, who wrote in /Orality and Literacy < http://dss-edit.com/prof-anon/sound/library/Ong_orality_and_literacy.pdf>:
"/Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the /Phaedrus/, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. The same of course is said of computers. Secondly, Plato’s Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Today, parents and others fear that pocket calculators provide an external resource for what ought to be the internal resource of memorized multiplication tables. Calculators weaken the mind, relieve it of the work that keeps it strong. Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place. In the modern critique of the computer, the same objection is put, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. Fourthly, in keeping with the agonistic mentality of oral cultures, Plato’s Socrates also holds it against writing that the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can: real speech and thought always exist essentially in a context of give-and-take between real persons.Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers...." (p. 78).
This juxtaposition between what Plato said about writing and how people said/say about computers may have led to some of the comparisons you mentioned.
- Aaron Hung
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 1:56 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> wrote:
Hi Thomas,
thanks, and forgive me for being somewhat vague in this regard. I'm reluctant to provide specific examples because my intent is not to develop or direct a critique against specific authors / colleagues, or even give the impression thereof. It is rather, as stated, a genuine concern that I've missed something somehow and am curious about the history of the trope.
So perhaps a generic description will do? An author/s seek to build a case that criticisms of a specific new media technology / use are somehow off the mark or misleading as the these criticisms can rather be understood to fit the model of a media panic. E.g., Tindr and other hook-up apps are not necessarily the end of real romance and deep relationships; these reactions are rather a media panic - one that overlooks several positives uncovered by more careful / empirical analysis.
To be sure, such an account can be built - and, in my reading, often so - quite carefully and successfully.
Often, these accounts (rightly) draw on Kirsten Drotner's Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 35:3, 593-619 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0030923990350303 To be explicit, Kirsten does _not_ invoke Plato or the Phaedrus, but rather begins her exquisite account with panics surrounding print media. In addition, building in part on the work of Stanley Cohen (1972), Kirsten develops a very helpful taxonomy of primary criteria of such panics.
At least on occasion, however, as the argument continues, in providing a few examples of earlier moral / media panics to helpfully illustrate what these are, an author will further invoke the mythos of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus as just such an example of a media / moral panic. Doing so aims at establishing a (broad) conclusion to the effect that we always panic with the emergence of new media - but this is more or less absurd, i.e., look at Plato's critique of writing. By the same token, critiques of new technology X (e.g., Tindr, but the list is all but endless, of course) are (ridiculous) media / moral panics and so critiques of new technology X can be easily dismissed.
(There's a second logical problem in at least some examples of this argument - namely, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Roughly: If you have a strong example of a moral / media panic --> (then) you will find X out of Y criteria (as listed by Drotner and/or others). SO: if I find X out of Y criteria surrounding media coverage of new technology x --> THEN I can conclude the criticisms included here are but instances of moral panic and, by implication, deserve no further attention. This is a variation of the social science chestnut that correlation does not equal causation.)
I hope this helps give a better sense of the argument strand / trope I'm curious about?
Again, many thanks - c.
On 24/04/2019 18:50, Thomas Ball wrote: > Dr Ess- > This is a challenging query. One thing that might help orient > potential respondents would be for you to cite one or two articles > exemplifying "moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing." > As it is, we're left guessing what you have in mind. > Thank you, > Best regards, > Thomas > > On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 12:37 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> > <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>>> wrote: > > Dear AoIRists, > > Please be kind and patient with me, recalling that my formal academic > training was in history of philosophy, German literature, and ancient > Greek. I am comparatively still a little wet around the ears with > regard to media and communication studies - or so it seems in this > instance. > > I keep encountering discussions of moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing. > > This seemingly standard invocation puzzles me greatly for a long > list of > reasons. I include a short list below for anyone with time and > interest > in looking them over. > > The upshot is that I'm left wondering: who - and when - introduced what > has apparently become received tradition in these domains that the > mythos (see "2" below) of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus is a > prime or supportive example moral or media panic? > > This is, as they say in administration-speak, an appreciative inquiry. > I'm genuinely curious for the sake of better understanding how this > trope first appeared, etc - as well as genuine worried that I may have > somehow missed something that is considered elementary and obvious for > those of you with academic training more directly within media and > communication studies. > > Many thanks in advance for any enlightenment and eludation! > best, > - charles ess > > PS: The short list includes: > 1) the account is taken (bloody and screaming) out of the context of > the > larger dialogue in the Phaedrus. When read within the larger context - > beginning with (the young) Phaedrus' effort to impress (perhaps seduce) > Socrates by memorizing a speech he has copied down on a scroll and > initially tries to hide from Socrates - the mythos works much more > immediately as a lightly veiled (and hence, pedagogically speaking, > likely more successful) chastisement of Phaedrus' efforts at > dissimulation. By no means a wholesale critique of writing per se. > 2) The account is explicitly delivered as a _mythos_ - too easily > translated as a "myth." But: a _mythos_ in Plato is a technical / > philosophical form, going well beyond and in some ways directly > contradicting more everyday notions of "myth" as a false story; a > mythos > is specifically an _oral_ story, with its own set of distinctive > strengths and limitations. It is often used in Plato when > interlocutors, > attempting to pursue a reasoned argument (logos), come to an impass. > The relation between mythos and logos is hence often complementary, not > contradictory. > 3) It would seem very odd for an author of multiple dialogues, of > sometimes staggering sophistication and literary nuance, to sincerely > believe that writing is somehow an entirely suspect technology. > Different from orality, certainly, as is suggested by the consistent > presentation of Socrates as an oral teacher, the careful use of mythos > vs. logos, etc. - but hardly an example of media / moral panic. > And so on. > Again: what am I missing? > > Again, many thanks, > - c. > -- > Professor in Media Studies > Department of Media and Communication > University of Oslo > < http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> > > Postboks 1093 > Blindern 0317 > Oslo, Norway > c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> > _______________________________________________ > The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org> <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org>> mailing > list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ >
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org> mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
Definitely an interesting thread! The link between Plato and Ong is clear but it seems a bit of a stretch to describe Plato's ambivalence wrt writing as 'panic', moral, media or otherwise. The history of philosophy aside, another track worth pursuing is to search Google Ngram Viewer ( https://books.google.com/ngrams) between 1500-2008 (the earliest and latest available years). Use the keywords 'moral panic' and 'media panic' as separate queries. The results are interesting and suggestive. For instance, 'moral panic' shows very low levels of incidence (there's a bump around 1750) until the mid-1960s when it takes off exponentially. The origins of this spike are probably related to Marshall McLuhan's use if the term “moral panic” as early as 1964 to describe the reactions of many “highly literate people” to the new “electric” media, as noted by Syvertsen in his 2017 book, *Media Resistance: Connecting the Dots*. Note that Ngrams is only searching digitized books and hasn't been updated for over a decade. At the bottom of the Ngram page are relevant citations broken out by time period. Another useful tool is to simply drop these same keywords into Google Search. On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 2:30 PM Aaron Hung <aaron.chiayuanhung@gmail.com> wrote:
You might also want to look into Eric Havelock's *Preface to Plato <https://monoskop.org/images/0/0d/Havelock_Eric_A_Preface_to_Plato.pdf>*. Ong draws on him a lot but I'm less familiar with it myself so I'm not sure how that argument developed.
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 2:26 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
Thanks in turn for the reference! And you, along with Mark Johns, may well be onto something here - somewhere between Ong and Postman at least some version of the mythos becomes familiar to folk ... and somewhere along the line it gets appropriated, if in a (necessarily) simplified version, into discourse on moral / media panics. But where / when / and by whom?
Again, just curious - and concerned that I may be missing an important set of arguments somewhere.
best, - c.
On 24/04/2019 20:12, Aaron Hung wrote:
What a fascinating discussion! And coincidentally, I came across this just last night when reading /Paper /by Mark Kurlansky.
In terms of how this notion of moral panic has been attributed, fairly or not and accurate or not, to Plato, I trace my own familiarity to this argument to my first introduction to Walter Ong, who wrote in /Orality and Literacy < http://dss-edit.com/prof-anon/sound/library/Ong_orality_and_literacy.pdf :
"/Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the /Phaedrus/, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. The same of course is said of computers. Secondly, Plato’s Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Today, parents and others fear that pocket calculators provide an external resource for what ought to be the internal resource of memorized multiplication tables. Calculators weaken the mind, relieve it of the work that keeps it strong. Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place. In the modern critique of the computer, the same objection is put, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. Fourthly, in keeping with the agonistic mentality of oral cultures, Plato’s Socrates also holds it against writing that the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can: real speech and thought always exist essentially in a context of give-and-take between real persons.Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers...." (p. 78).
This juxtaposition between what Plato said about writing and how people said/say about computers may have led to some of the comparisons you mentioned.
- Aaron Hung
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 1:56 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> wrote:
Hi Thomas,
thanks, and forgive me for being somewhat vague in this regard. I'm reluctant to provide specific examples because my intent is not to develop or direct a critique against specific authors / colleagues, or even give the impression thereof. It is rather, as stated, a genuine concern that I've missed something somehow and am curious about the history of the trope.
So perhaps a generic description will do? An author/s seek to build a case that criticisms of a specific new media technology / use are somehow off the mark or misleading as the these criticisms can rather be understood to fit the model of a media panic. E.g., Tindr and other hook-up apps are not necessarily the end of real romance and deep relationships; these reactions are rather a media panic - one that overlooks several positives uncovered by more careful / empirical analysis.
To be sure, such an account can be built - and, in my reading, often so - quite carefully and successfully.
Often, these accounts (rightly) draw on Kirsten Drotner's Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 35:3, 593-619 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0030923990350303 To be explicit, Kirsten does _not_ invoke Plato or the Phaedrus, but rather begins her exquisite account with panics surrounding print media. In addition, building in part on the work of Stanley Cohen (1972), Kirsten develops a very helpful taxonomy of primary criteria of such panics.
At least on occasion, however, as the argument continues, in providing a few examples of earlier moral / media panics to helpfully illustrate what these are, an author will further invoke the mythos of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus as just such an example of a media / moral panic. Doing so aims at establishing a (broad) conclusion to the effect that we always panic with the emergence of new media - but this is more or less absurd, i.e., look at Plato's critique of writing. By the same token, critiques of new technology X (e.g., Tindr, but the list is all but endless, of course) are (ridiculous) media / moral panics and so critiques of new technology X can be easily dismissed.
(There's a second logical problem in at least some examples of this argument - namely, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Roughly: If you have a strong example of a moral / media panic --> (then) you will find X out of Y criteria (as listed by Drotner and/or others). SO: if I find X out of Y criteria surrounding media coverage of new technology x --> THEN I can conclude the criticisms included here are but instances of moral panic and, by implication, deserve no further attention. This is a variation of the social science chestnut that correlation does not equal causation.)
I hope this helps give a better sense of the argument strand / trope I'm curious about?
Again, many thanks - c.
On 24/04/2019 18:50, Thomas Ball wrote: > Dr Ess- > This is a challenging query. One thing that might help orient > potential respondents would be for you to cite one or two articles > exemplifying "moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing." > As it is, we're left guessing what you have in mind. > Thank you, > Best regards, > Thomas > > On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 12:37 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> > <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>>> wrote: > > Dear AoIRists, > > Please be kind and patient with me, recalling that my formal academic > training was in history of philosophy, German literature, and ancient > Greek. I am comparatively still a little wet around the ears with > regard to media and communication studies - or so it seems in this > instance. > > I keep encountering discussions of moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing. > > This seemingly standard invocation puzzles me greatly for a long > list of > reasons. I include a short list below for anyone with time and > interest > in looking them over. > > The upshot is that I'm left wondering: who - and when - introduced what > has apparently become received tradition in these domains that the > mythos (see "2" below) of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus is a > prime or supportive example moral or media panic? > > This is, as they say in administration-speak, an appreciative inquiry. > I'm genuinely curious for the sake of better understanding how this > trope first appeared, etc - as well as genuine worried that I may have > somehow missed something that is considered elementary and obvious for > those of you with academic training more directly within media and > communication studies. > > Many thanks in advance for any enlightenment and eludation! > best, > - charles ess > > PS: The short list includes: > 1) the account is taken (bloody and screaming) out of the context of > the > larger dialogue in the Phaedrus. When read within the larger context - > beginning with (the young) Phaedrus' effort to impress (perhaps seduce) > Socrates by memorizing a speech he has copied down on a scroll and > initially tries to hide from Socrates - the mythos works much more > immediately as a lightly veiled (and hence, pedagogically speaking, > likely more successful) chastisement of Phaedrus' efforts at > dissimulation. By no means a wholesale critique of writing per se. > 2) The account is explicitly delivered as a _mythos_ - too easily > translated as a "myth." But: a _mythos_ in Plato is a technical / > philosophical form, going well beyond and in some ways directly > contradicting more everyday notions of "myth" as a false story; a > mythos > is specifically an _oral_ story, with its own set of distinctive > strengths and limitations. It is often used in Plato when > interlocutors, > attempting to pursue a reasoned argument (logos), come to an impass. > The relation between mythos and logos is hence often complementary, not > contradictory. > 3) It would seem very odd for an author of multiple dialogues, of > sometimes staggering sophistication and literary nuance, to sincerely > believe that writing is somehow an entirely suspect technology. > Different from orality, certainly, as is suggested by the consistent > presentation of Socrates as an oral teacher, the careful use of mythos > vs. logos, etc. - but hardly an example of media / moral panic. > And so on. > Again: what am I missing? > > Again, many thanks, > - c. > -- > Professor in Media Studies > Department of Media and Communication > University of Oslo > < http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> > > Postboks 1093 > Blindern 0317 > Oslo, Norway > c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> > _______________________________________________ > The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org
<mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org>> mailing > list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ >
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org>
mailing
list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Dear AoIR-L members, Thank you for this interesting discussion. One of the first mentions I found of the fragment of Plato’s Phaedrus in connection with the emergence of technology was in an article written by December (1993): https://www.december.com/john/papers/pscrc93.txt. He cites not only Ong but also Havelock and McLuhan. All of them have described the shift from the active, participatory world of orality to the linear, static, world of writing. Maybe one of them was the first to mention Plato. Baumann (1986, like Ong) in "The Written Word: Literacy in Transition", also mentions Plato. The reluctance - not to say criticism or panic - about new technology is a recurrent phenomenon in the history of humanity. Bell wrote on Slate an entertaining piece on this phenomenon for a general audience, which I highly recommend https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-technology-scares-fr... Let us know if you find out who opened the box! Best, --- Agnese Sampietro Postdoctoral Research Fellow Universitat Jaume I Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Department of European Languages and Cultures e-mail: sampietr@uji.es Twitter: @speakabouttech <https://twitter.com/speakabouttech> Website: https://sites.google.com/view/agnesesampietro My latest paper: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Yh8D1L-nhBhG- El mié., 24 abr. 2019 a las 23:26, Thomas Ball (<xtc283@gmail.com>) escribió:
Definitely an interesting thread! The link between Plato and Ong is clear but it seems a bit of a stretch to describe Plato's ambivalence wrt writing as 'panic', moral, media or otherwise.
The history of philosophy aside, another track worth pursuing is to search Google Ngram Viewer ( https://books.google.com/ngrams) between 1500-2008 (the earliest and latest available years). Use the keywords 'moral panic' and 'media panic' as separate queries. The results are interesting and suggestive. For instance, 'moral panic' shows very low levels of incidence (there's a bump around 1750) until the mid-1960s when it takes off exponentially. The origins of this spike are probably related to Marshall McLuhan's use if the term “moral panic” as early as 1964 to describe the reactions of many “highly literate people” to the new “electric” media, as noted by Syvertsen in his 2017 book, *Media Resistance: Connecting the Dots*.
Note that Ngrams is only searching digitized books and hasn't been updated for over a decade. At the bottom of the Ngram page are relevant citations broken out by time period.
Another useful tool is to simply drop these same keywords into Google Search.
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 2:30 PM Aaron Hung <aaron.chiayuanhung@gmail.com> wrote:
You might also want to look into Eric Havelock's *Preface to Plato <https://monoskop.org/images/0/0d/Havelock_Eric_A_Preface_to_Plato.pdf *. Ong draws on him a lot but I'm less familiar with it myself so I'm not sure how that argument developed.
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 2:26 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no> wrote:
Thanks in turn for the reference! And you, along with Mark Johns, may well be onto something here - somewhere between Ong and Postman at least some version of the mythos becomes familiar to folk ... and somewhere along the line it gets appropriated, if in a (necessarily) simplified version, into discourse on moral / media panics. But where / when / and by whom?
Again, just curious - and concerned that I may be missing an important set of arguments somewhere.
best, - c.
On 24/04/2019 20:12, Aaron Hung wrote:
What a fascinating discussion! And coincidentally, I came across this just last night when reading /Paper /by Mark Kurlansky.
In terms of how this notion of moral panic has been attributed, fairly or not and accurate or not, to Plato, I trace my own familiarity to this argument to my first introduction to Walter Ong, who wrote in /Orality and Literacy <
http://dss-edit.com/prof-anon/sound/library/Ong_orality_and_literacy.pdf
:
"/Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the /Phaedrus/, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can be only in the mind. It is a thing, a manufactured product. The same of course is said of computers. Secondly, Plato’s Socrates urges, writing destroys memory. Those who use writing will become forgetful, relying on an external resource for what they lack in internal resources. Writing weakens the mind. Today, parents and others fear that pocket calculators provide an external resource for what ought to be the internal resource of memorized multiplication tables. Calculators weaken the mind, relieve it of the work that keeps it strong. Thirdly, a written text is basically unresponsive. If you ask a person to explain his or her statement, you can get an explanation; if you ask a text, you get back nothing except the same, often stupid, words which called for your question in the first place. In the modern critique of the computer, the same objection is put, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. Fourthly, in keeping with the agonistic mentality of oral cultures, Plato’s Socrates also holds it against writing that the written word cannot defend itself as the natural spoken word can: real speech and thought always exist essentially in a context of give-and-take between real persons.Writing is passive, out of it, in an unreal, unnatural world. So are computers...." (p. 78).
This juxtaposition between what Plato said about writing and how people said/say about computers may have led to some of the comparisons you mentioned.
- Aaron Hung
On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 1:56 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> wrote:
Hi Thomas,
thanks, and forgive me for being somewhat vague in this regard. I'm reluctant to provide specific examples because my intent is not to develop or direct a critique against specific authors / colleagues, or even give the impression thereof. It is rather, as stated, a genuine concern that I've missed something somehow and am curious about the history of the trope.
So perhaps a generic description will do? An author/s seek to build a case that criticisms of a specific new media technology / use are somehow off the mark or misleading as the these criticisms can rather be understood to fit the model of a media panic. E.g., Tindr and other hook-up apps are not necessarily the end of real romance and deep relationships; these reactions are rather a media panic - one that overlooks several positives uncovered by more careful / empirical analysis.
To be sure, such an account can be built - and, in my reading, often so - quite carefully and successfully.
Often, these accounts (rightly) draw on Kirsten Drotner's Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 35:3, 593-619 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0030923990350303 To be explicit, Kirsten does _not_ invoke Plato or the Phaedrus, but rather begins her exquisite account with panics surrounding print media. In addition, building in part on the work of Stanley Cohen (1972), Kirsten develops a very helpful taxonomy of primary criteria of such panics.
At least on occasion, however, as the argument continues, in providing a few examples of earlier moral / media panics to helpfully illustrate what these are, an author will further invoke the mythos of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus as just such an example of a media / moral panic. Doing so aims at establishing a (broad) conclusion to the effect that we always panic with the emergence of new media - but this is more or less absurd, i.e., look at Plato's critique of writing. By the same token, critiques of new technology X (e.g., Tindr, but the list is all but endless, of course) are (ridiculous) media / moral panics and so critiques of new technology X can be easily dismissed.
(There's a second logical problem in at least some examples of this argument - namely, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Roughly: If you have a strong example of a moral / media panic --> (then) you will find X out of Y criteria (as listed by Drotner and/or others). SO: if I find X out of Y criteria surrounding media coverage of new technology x --> THEN I can conclude the criticisms included here are but instances of moral panic and, by implication, deserve no further attention. This is a variation of the social science chestnut that correlation does not equal causation.)
I hope this helps give a better sense of the argument strand / trope I'm curious about?
Again, many thanks - c.
On 24/04/2019 18:50, Thomas Ball wrote: > Dr Ess- > This is a challenging query. One thing that might help orient > potential respondents would be for you to cite one or two articles > exemplifying "moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing." > As it is, we're left guessing what you have in mind. > Thank you, > Best regards, > Thomas > > On Wed, Apr 24, 2019 at 12:37 PM Charles M. Ess <c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> > <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>>> wrote: > > Dear AoIRists, > > Please be kind and patient with me, recalling that my formal academic > training was in history of philosophy, German literature, and ancient > Greek. I am comparatively still a little wet around the ears with > regard to media and communication studies - or so it seems in this > instance. > > I keep encountering discussions of moral / media panics that > consistently invoke Plato's _myth_ of the invention of writing. > > This seemingly standard invocation puzzles me greatly for a long > list of > reasons. I include a short list below for anyone with time and > interest > in looking them over. > > The upshot is that I'm left wondering: who - and when - introduced what > has apparently become received tradition in these domains that the > mythos (see "2" below) of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus is a > prime or supportive example moral or media panic? > > This is, as they say in administration-speak, an appreciative inquiry. > I'm genuinely curious for the sake of better understanding how this > trope first appeared, etc - as well as genuine worried that I may have > somehow missed something that is considered elementary and obvious for > those of you with academic training more directly within media and > communication studies. > > Many thanks in advance for any enlightenment and eludation! > best, > - charles ess > > PS: The short list includes: > 1) the account is taken (bloody and screaming) out of the context of > the > larger dialogue in the Phaedrus. When read within the larger context - > beginning with (the young) Phaedrus' effort to impress (perhaps seduce) > Socrates by memorizing a speech he has copied down on a scroll and > initially tries to hide from Socrates - the mythos works much more > immediately as a lightly veiled (and hence, pedagogically speaking, > likely more successful) chastisement of Phaedrus' efforts at > dissimulation. By no means a wholesale critique of writing per se. > 2) The account is explicitly delivered as a _mythos_ - too easily > translated as a "myth." But: a _mythos_ in Plato is a technical / > philosophical form, going well beyond and in some ways directly > contradicting more everyday notions of "myth" as a false story; a > mythos > is specifically an _oral_ story, with its own set of distinctive > strengths and limitations. It is often used in Plato when > interlocutors, > attempting to pursue a reasoned argument (logos), come to an impass. > The relation between mythos and logos is hence often complementary, not > contradictory. > 3) It would seem very odd for an author of multiple dialogues, of > sometimes staggering sophistication and literary nuance, to sincerely > believe that writing is somehow an entirely suspect technology. > Different from orality, certainly, as is suggested by the consistent > presentation of Socrates as an oral teacher, the careful use of mythos > vs. logos, etc. - but hardly an example of media / moral panic. > And so on. > Again: what am I missing? > > Again, many thanks, > - c. > -- > Professor in Media Studies > Department of Media and Communication > University of Oslo > < http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html> > > Postboks 1093 > Blindern 0317 > Oslo, Norway > c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no>> > _______________________________________________ > The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto: Air-L@listserv.aoir.org
<mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org
mailing > list > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org > > Join the Association of Internet Researchers: > http://www.aoir.org/ >
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no <mailto:c.m.ess@media.uio.no> _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org <mailto:Air-L@listserv.aoir.org>
mailing
list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers
Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication University of Oslo <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/people/aca/charlees/index.html>
Postboks 1093 Blindern 0317 Oslo, Norway c.m.ess@media.uio.no
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
participants (3)
-
Aaron Hung -
Agnese Sampietro -
Thomas Ball