Of course, the classic reference is Plato's dialogue, Phaedrus, in which Socrates tells a myth regarding the invention of writing by the Egyptian god Theuth - making the point that writing gives us the _illusory_ appearance of having knowledge, good memory, even wisdom - while the technology of writing in fact weakens our use of memory: "This invention, O king," said Theuth , "will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memories; for it is an elixir of memory and wisdom that I have discovered." But Thamus replied, "Most ingenious Theuth , one man has the ability to beget arts, but the ability to judge of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; [275a ] and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem [275b ] to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. (Fowler translation: see <http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/fowler/phaedrus14.htm>) FWIW: I think there is truth in the Socratic story. Much has been written, for example, about "cyber-gnosticism," our confusing our increasing ability to find and retrieve the sorts of knowledge and information that become increasingly available on the web and in our computers with - wisdom, which, for me, involves not only recollection but also judgment and reflection that are not always fostered by computer-mediated recollection. But of course it's enormously complicated. I would also be the first to argue that because the new technologies increase our ability to store, organize, and retrieve information - including insightful texts such as this one - our grasp on these as necessary but not sufficient conditions for judgment and wisdom can likewise increase. There's also the phenomenon: writing something down - whether on paper or on our computers - helps many of us remember it better than if we had not written it down at all. I often find that I'll make an appointment on my PDA - and then not need to look at it because I remember it. (But I also forget to look at it sometimes - and miss appointments!) In my mind, Clifford Geertz has made the point well. From stone-age tools through writing to these latest technologies - our minds produce and are thereby expanded by our physical artifacts. Our minds are not, as Descartes argued, some internal homunculus entirely divorced from our bodily , machinery but are rather "in the world" outside our bodies, i.e., precisely in the artifacts - including the tools of memory - that we produce and use. The issue is _not_, then, whether our memory - much less our wisdom - is better served with pure orality, print and literacy, and/or the technologies of electronic culture. Rather, the trick, in my mind, is learning how to use the capabilities of the new tools - alongside the capabilities of the more traditional ones - to foster judgment, reflection, and wisdom. It can be done - but I think it's probably rare. These lovely visions and ideals of fostering judgment, reflection, and wisdom have always been rare - and it seems difficult to remind ourselves of them in our fascination with the spectacle and endless distractions of our newer toys. I hope other AoIR-ists will balance this philosophical speculation with some good empirical studies! Cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

From: "Serge Courrier" <serge.courrier@pobox.com> Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 14:29:06 +0200 To: <air-l@aoir.org> Subject: [Air-l] Impact of intense technology use on memorization's quality

Hi,

Ones could think that the intense use of technology could lead to a impairment of our memory.

Immediate information finding through Web queries, automatic calendar alerts via PDA, telephone numbers memorized by cellular phones, access routes computed by GPS, and so on.

Do you know if anybody published a study or an article about this subject.

And what do YOU think about it ?

Best regards

_________________________________________ Serge Courrier Scientific journalist, Paris, France

_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

On Tuesday, July 8, 2003, at 09:35 AM, Ed Lamoureux wrote:

This is not too different from what Plato said/wrote in the PHAEDRUS concerning what would happen to the Greeks due to the full establishment of writing (away from oral). "It [writing] will cause us to forget" (roughly) . . .

and in a way, it did. In the oral age, "literate" Greeks had encyclopedic memories. Within 250 years after Plato, teachers of rhetoric had to teach memory systems.

I've thrilled to the running discussion of Plato's _Phaedrus_ on this list. Rhetoricians claim the _Phaedrus_ as a foundational text (as do those in a lot of other disciplines) and I've always seen Socrates' inveighing against writing as presenting a wonderful paradox, given that we have it only because Plato wrote it down (Derrida makes this point, among others, in the remarkable and intense "Plato's Pharmacy"). I often assign the dialogue in classes addressing technology and literacy, and in addition to Socrates' complain about writing's effect on the Greek art of memory, I also am fond of a passage in which Socrates' complains about writing's ability to distance words from their inventors. In the terrific Nehamas and Woodruff translation, the passage reads:

Socrates: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if they were alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they are solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it gives just the same message over and over. Once it has been written down, every discourse rolls about everywhere, reaching just as much those with understanding as those who have no business with it, and it does not know to whom it should speak and to whom not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it cannot defend itself or come to its own support.

I always follow this passage by asking students whether they believe Internet texts are more or less distant from their "parents" than print texts. In the early days of hypertext hype, most students were initially persuaded that hypertexts, especially link-rich web texts, were far more responsive than print texts. Today they are more wary. acknowledging that the "rolling around" has reached high speeds, but uncertain as to whether web texts are significantly better at defending themselves when interrogated. My hope is that collective interest in the _Phaedrus_ will prompt Penguin to again print its pocket-sized version of the (perfectly serviceable) Hamilton translation, which was available in the 1990s for the exceedingly fair price of $1.49. Alternatively, a scanned version of the Jowett translation hovers at: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/phaedrus.html Enjoy! Best, John Logie Rhetoric University of Minnesota

Like so many on this list, this is a wonderful debate, which I've really enjoyed following. I hope nobody minds me adding a couple of kind-of relevant (I hope) thoughts.

...

establishment of writing (away from oral). "It [writing] will cause us to forget" (roughly) . . .

and in a way, it did. In the oral age, "literate" Greeks had encyclopedic memories. Within 250 years after Plato, teachers of rhetoric had to teach memory systems.

It's my understanding that oral histories are highly selective. They're not 'encyclopedic' in the sense that they retain facts as independent entities, but instead reflect that which it is expedient to remember. I don't have the reference, unfortunately, but I have read about research done amongst oral communities, and it was found that the histories of twenty years before had changed enormously, and that defeats in battles over land or other incidents which did not contribute to the tribes' need to think of themselves as a unified and successful unit were - ah - written out of history: in other words, they weren't transmitted in the oral histories, and so 'didn't exist' and 'hadn't happened' except in the notes of the researchers who had transcribed these histories twenty years earlier. Even people who had been involved in these incidents apparently 'didn't remember' them. Ong talks about research which suggests that oral texts were not remembered exactly and transmitted exactly, but actually changed dramatically during retellings - just as when these stories were written down they changed in the retelling, and caused networks of manuscript traditions to emerge. Devices such as rhyme and verbal patterning may have helped storytellers remember the broader structure, but not the fine detail; the fine detail didn't seem to matter until the Romantic 'cult of the author' focused on the notion of a perfect, final text. Printing certainly helped to 'fix' texts in that a lot of identical texts could be produced, which was virtually impossible before then, but the idea that something printed was unchangeable is later: Caxton and his contemporaries changed the texts they printed enormously. The Middle English _Prose Merlin_ (c.1450) has a scene in which many men are killed in a great battle; all those who died are buried and their names written on the graves except for the most important man killed as it is said that there is no need to mark his grave as no one will ever forget whose grave it is. Yet it is stressed a number of times in the manuscript that the story of Merlin itself only exists because he told it to his mentor, who wrote it down, and because the scribe has read that written story in other books. Writing, and gaining power from having written things down, is a motif which occurs quite often in that text. Best wishes Rowin Cross

First, my thanks to Ed for continuing and refining this discussion! Second, I can't resist what may seem to be a small quibble:

From: Ed Lamoureux <ell@hilltop.bradley.edu> Reply-To: air-l@aoir.org Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 07:01:26 -0500 (CDT) To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: RE: [Air-l] Plato meets the Blogroll

Like all ancient "authors," Plato can be read many different ways. I teach oral rhetoric, so read the PHEADRUS (and other Platonic works) for their commentary about speech making. It is, for many rhetoricians, a foundational text proposing an "ideal" rhetoric (or presenting a rhetoric so idealized that none can aspire to it, thereby following Plato's normal habit of denigrating the art/practice).

By all means, Plato can be read in many different ways, and one of the upshots of the reading I suggested earlier is that the apparent denigration of arts/practices - including rhetoric as well as _poesis_ in the broader sense - is just that, i.e., apparent. Rather, connecting Plato's allegory of the cave with the _analogy_ of the line in the Republic - coupled with some background understanding of the use of analogy in both Greek mathematics prior to Plato and then subsequently in the Western philosophical tradition - leads to a quite different understanding of the relationship between theory and praxis / ideal and real in Plato. In contrast with what is really a modernist/Cartesian reading that stresses a dualistic opposition between theory and praxis / ideal and real (leading to just the denigration of the latter that you are concerned about [and rightly so, if this were indeed Plato's intention]) - the older readings stress instead, via analogy, the inextricable and inviolable _connection_ between these domains. Again, the upshot is an understanding of the connection and complementarity between these domains - a complimentarity manifested precisely in Plato's own use of rhetoric, poetry, myth, and writing itself as superb vehicles within which to portray and encourage philosophical reasoning and critique (including, of course, critique of rhetoric, poetry, myth, and writing - insofar as these are divorced from philosophy in the first place by the Sophists). Of course,I realize that the AoIR list, in the end, is probably not the place for extended discussions of readings of Plato - but I think this quibble is worth passing on to the list at large, first of all as it suggests an alternative understanding of Plato that, in my view, argues for a highly "interdisciplinary" understanding of the relationships between, say, rhetoric and philosophy, as well as between orality / literacy / print / electronic technologies. Further, such non-dualistic understandings of important figures in Western philosophy have the advantage of establishing greater resonance (alongside irreducible contrasts) between "Western" and "Eastern" views (terms themselves highly contested, but perhaps still useful in a shorthand kind of way). Such resonances, in my view, are fruitful and promising especially for folk interested in not only interdisciplinary but also genuinely global approaches - i.e., the sorts of approaches I believe AoIR-ists are most interested in. In any case, I hope this has been helpful, and I look forward to further discussions! Thanks again, Ed - all best wishes, and cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

And what do YOU think about it ?

Personal annecdote: I waited tables in college. I could only remember my orders if I didn't write them down. I could remember 3 course meals for tables of up to 6, and could probably recite some tables back to you now. One day we got a new manager who insisted that not writing orders on a memo pad was unprofessional. I started forgetting salads, coffees, and special requests left and right. There are 2 points here: 1) I agree based on personal experience (for whatever it's worth) that media are extensions of memory; 2) high-tech media and tools should not be singled out; any medium that does its job affects memory and other human cognitive processes. Cheers! Ruth Ruth Kaufman http://ruthkaufman.com/othermedia