Socrates vs. the Written Word (2011)

A modern commentator collects ancient and later complaints about new media to argue that curmudgeonly resistance to technological change is a recurring human pattern. Using Plato’s Phaedrus, the account recounts Theuth presenting letters to the Egyptian king Thamus, who calls writing an “elixir of reminding” that produces forgetfulness and only the appearance of wisdom. Socrates adds that written words are like paintings - silent, unable to answer questions or defend themselves - and insists genuine knowledge requires live dialectic, not static text. Plato’s Seventh Epistle is cited to extend this claim: serious philosophical understanding, formed by interrogation and testing, should not be exposed to the misunderstandings of written transmission.

The same skepticism resurfaces across history: a fifteenth-century attack on the printing press and 1880s anxieties about the telephone’s lack of a written record are marshaled as parallels. Railroad operators worried spoken orders would leave no trace, and M. C. Selden’s 1894 reply - write the message beforehand and preserve notes at both ends - illustrates pragmatic adaptation. The commentator accepts the value of experiential, dialogic learning but rejects the either/or fallacy that the old mode is therefore superior in all respects, noting the irony that Plato’s dialogues survive precisely because they were written down.