History began with records. The past only becomes the past through records.
As we come into the modern age and voices and images can be stored and replayed like virtual reality, might this logic gradually be diluted too?
Walter J. Ong, Jesuit priest, philosopher, and cultural historian
A spoken sign leaves no material trace and disappears immediately, remaining only in a person's head.
A written sign infinitely extends, across space and time, the range through which one person can communicate with another. In other words, writing grants the writer's spirit a life — distinct from bodily life — sustained by ink, paper, and readers.
But a new channel does more than extend the previous channel. A new channel is a new method that enables reuse and re-composition. A wholly new structure of information emerges. The power of recording lies not only in the knowledge preserved and transmitted, but also in coded visual words, the act of transmission, and the methodology of replacing objects with signs. Then, later on, signs come to replace signs.
Samuel Butler
Surprisingly, the person who opposed the new technology of writing was Plato — the very first figure to long enjoy the benefits of records. Through Socrates, who left no written words, Plato warned that this technology (writing) meant impoverishment.
For this will cause forgetfulness in the souls of those who learn, by making them neglect their memory; since, trusting in writing, they will call things to mind through marks that belong to others from outside, not from within themselves on their own. So what you have discovered is not a remedy for memory but for reminding. And you are giving your students not true wisdom but only the appearance of wisdom.
It's striking that Plato, or that era, referred to recording as a "technology." It could be a worthwhile exercise to think ahead about which of the technologies we name today might, when viewed from the future, appear in a similar light.
Also, aren't all of Plato's words right? Don't we? just bookmark, share, or retweet things that look wise?
