Previously, I shared a curmudgeonly 1889 part concerning the menace of power and the telephone and its religious cousin, a fifteenth-century screed lamenting the printing press. I’m collecting data current in assistance of a assumption that advancement is universally despised, that the “get off my grassland you whippersnappers” emotion that we all occasionally cognition is additional tied to our composition as humans than the innovation and the changes themselves. These feelings, I posit, are universal, and perchance create us awareness detached — we see others doing things differently, and experiencing existence in a distinct way, and we can’t comprehend it, or all we can see is what they’re missing. If lone they would realize! But those group are not bad — they are merely native to the next thing, perhaps, and they cognition the earth slightly differently. And so the earth turns.
When I mentioned that I expected this curmudgeonly opinion against advancement was average all throughout history, several commenters pointed me to the Phaedrus, a Socratic conversation of about 370 B.C.
In it, Socrates recounts to Phaedrus the Egyptian fable of Theuth, the god who invented “numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, additionally draughts and dice, and, most crucial of all, letters.” Theuth presents the Egyptian king Thamus alongside his many inventions, and Thamus
…said many things to Theuth in praise or accuse of the assorted arts, which it would obtain too lengthy to repeat; but whenever they came to the letters, “This invention, O king,” stated Theuth, “will create the Egyptians wiser and volition enhance their memories; for it is an elixir of recollection and knowledge that I have discovered.”
But Thamus replied, “Most ingenious Theuth, one man has the capability to beget arts, but the capability to fairness of their usefulness or harmfulness to their users belongs to another; and now you, who are the begetter of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the contrary of that which they really possess.
“For this innovation volition create forgetfulness in the minds of those who study to use it, since they volition not custom their memory. Their rely in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, volition discourage the use of their own recollection inside them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you recommendation your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they volition peruse many things without education and volition hence appear to cognize many things, whenever they are for the most part uninformed and difficult to get alongside with, since they are not wise, but lone appear wise.” (Phaedrus 274c-275b)
To which Phaedrus calmly replies: “Socrates, you effortlessly create up stories of Egypt or any nation you please.”
Socrates continues:
Socrates
He who thinks, then, that he has remaining rearward him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the condemnation that item in penning volition be apparent and certain, would be an utterly uncomplicated person, and in fact uninformed of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use apart from to prompt him who knows the matter concerning which they are written.Phaedrus
Very true.Socrates
Writing, Phaedrus, has this different quality, and is extremely akin painting; for the creatures of artwork remain akin living beings, but if one asks them a question, they maintain a serious silence. And so it is alongside written words; you power think they said as if they had intelligence, but if you inquiry them, wishing to cognize concerning their sayings, they continually say lone one and the identical thing. And all word, whenever formerly it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who comprehend and those who have no involvement in it, and it knows not to whom to conversation or not to speak; whenever ill-treated or unjustly reviled it continually needs its begetter to assistance it; for it has no power to defend or assistance itself.Now inform me; is there not another benevolent of speech, or word, which shows itself to be the lawful brother of this bastard one, the two in the manner of its begetting and in its improved and additional mighty nature?
Phaedrus
What is this term and how is it begotten, as you say?
Socrates
The term which is written alongside intellect in the intellect of the learner, which is capable to defend itself and knows to whom it should speak, and before whom to be silent.
Phaedrus
You average the living and breathing term of him who knows, of which the written term may justly be called the image.
Socrates
Exactly. Now inform me this. Would a sensible husbandman, who has seeds which he cares for and which he wishes to withstand fruit, factory them alongside grave intent in the warmth of summer in several storyline of Adonis, and pleasance in seeing them appear in attractiveness in eight days, or would he do that kind of thing, whenever he did it at all, lone in perform and for amusement? Would he not, whenever he was in earnest, prosecute the rules of husbandry, factory his seeds in fitting ground, and be pleased whenever those which he had sowed reached their perfection in the eighth month?
Phaedrus
Yes, Socrates, he would, as you say, act in that way whenever in earnest and in the another way lone for amusement.
Socrates
And shall we assume that he who has cognition of the fair and the fine and beautiful has small awareness concerning his seeds than the husbandman?
Phaedrus
By no means.
Socrates
Then he volition not, whenever in earnest, compose them in ink, sowing them through a pen alongside words which cannot defend themselves by disagreement and cannot instruct the fact effectually.
Socrates lays out an disagreement that the written term cannot defend itself in dialogue, and thus cannot efficiently instruct item value knowing. For lone through banter, through back-and-forth conversation and rhetorical disagreement and the operating out of problems, can true cognition be conveyed. Reading uncomplicated words, in his mind, is akin to looking at a lake fairly than swimming in it — or worse, looking at a lake and thinking that now you cognize how to swim.
Plato (the transcriber of this dialogue) expounds additional on the idea in his Seventh Epistle:
After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and another data of sense, are brought into communication and conflict one alongside another, in the way of scrutiny and kindly evaluation by men who continue by inquiry and answer without ill will, alongside a abrupt flash there shines onward understanding concerning all problem, and an intellect whose efforts attain the furthest limits of individual powers. Therefore all man of worth, whenever dealing alongside matters of worth, volition be far from exposing them to ill emotion and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing…
Anyone who has followed this conversation and digression volition cognize fine that, if Dionysios or anyone else, awesome or small, has written a treatise on the highest matters and the archetypal principles of things, he has, so I say, neither heard nor learnt any audio instruction concerning the topic of his treatise; otherwise, he would have had the identical reverence for it, which I have, and would have shrunk from putting it onward into a earth of discord and uncomeliness.
Dionysios current is Dionysios the Younger of Syracuse, a ruthless tyrant, who has written a treatise on philosophy. Plato argues that he must have done it for fame or glory, since it’s plainly a scam — doctrine can’t be taught in writing; it can lone be felt, experienced, asserted out and sensed.
In a way this is an disagreement extremely akin to that of Trithemius against the printing press — that a perceived flattening or automating of a form necessarily involves a loss; that fact (whether it be doctrine or Scripture) is finest consumed and absorbed experientially. I think this is a awesome opinion and one value considering equal now.
Where I think they misstep, however, is in their condemnation that it’s either/or: the old way is better ergo the new format has no value. Though frequently conflated, in my intellect those are two distinct arguments; one can’t necessarily measure a new item by how awesome the old item was. (And of course, we wouldn’t have Plato’s records at all if he hadn’t written them downward — which Socrates, true to his word, never did — and similarly, Trimethius had to have his treatise printed in command to accomplish any kind of bulk circulation.)
Interestingly, the speech-vs-text disagreement appears again in the 1880s, but in reverse: alongside the advent of the telephone, hands are wrung that communication volition rotate into rife alongside error and misunderstanding since dissimilar the telegraph, the newfangled phone leaves no written record!
This is a particular issue in the case of endeavor transactions that may end up in court, and also, curiously, in the rarefied earth of railroad switching, anywhere track orders are routinely communicated onward of a train by an armed forces of telegraph operators. Without written records of all communication, any errors that logic accidents downward the row couldn’t be tracked to their source.
Luckily for the telephone, astute group were on hand alongside sure-fire solutions:
At the latest gathering at Detroit of the Association of Railroad Telegraph Superintendents. Mr. M. C. Selden of the Baltimore & Ohio peruse a document upon the topic of the phone in railroad service. The exception made to the phone in difference alongside the telegraph, that there would be no written record, is answered by Mr. Selden. He calls notice to the fact that the average telegraph device gives no written record, and that the component of individual fallibility is current in its use; and that if a phone communication is written before sending and spelled out, as it have to be if of importance, the receiver volition have roomy period to compose it out during receiving it, and records are thus preserved at the two ends of the line. In matters of small critical importance the phone offers advantages which can not be approximated by the telegraph. — Railway Age magazine, 1894
In another words, to create a written document on the telephone, the sender should compose downward what he’s going to say, and the receiver should compose downward what he hears. Perfectly convenient!
In fairness, most of the documents I’ve been capable to reveal lone obliquely citation the expected problem, and treat it as minor. Another suggestion:
Although the phone is thus mostly availed of as a time-saver, there is motionless a inquisitive prejudice in many minds against telephoning telegrams all the way, without any involvement of the telegraph alongside its document — that supposedly holy talisman against errors in transmission. Considering the enormous amount of crucial endeavor that is regular transmitted by telephone, without an appreciable percent of error and at an immeasurably greater speed than that of the telegraph, it is notable that this unreasonable prejudice against telephoning written messages should motionless get in circles anywhere there is adequate average awareness to use either the telegraph or phone at all.
That it does motionless exist, however, is indisputable. No doubt this is mostly because of the fact that the phone companies, having had so far as much as they can do to act to their contiguous endeavor of supplying phone assistance clean and simple, have not yet taken any steps to cultivate a profitable site that lies prepared to their hands, the transfer and shipment of local telegrams. In all ample town there is plentifulness of petition for a cheap telegraph service, and the phone business has fair the factory and institution to furnish specified a service. It volition yet be many years before all man alongside whom occasional quick communication is desired by person alternatively has his own telegraph position in his own place, in the form of a telephone. Meanwhile the phone business has its wires and stations, community and private, in all directions, its messenger power and its supervisory force, all the machinery, in short, alongside which to arrange in a few days a rapid, productive and cheap local telegraph service. At, say, 10 cents a communication of twenty words of text, specified a assistance would be profitable to the phone business and would encounter alongside a prepared petition from the public. — The American Telephone Journal, Volume 6 (1902)
In another words, if folks think telegraphy is small convenient but additional secure, afterward the answer is to create telegraphy fair as convenient as telephones have become.
We have now, 100+ years later, 2000+ years afterward even, arrive complete circle on this matter formerly again, alongside the matter of texting. I’ve noticed that most group of my generation and younger now favor to content fairly than conversation on the phone, and this is borne out by several data:
The decrease in sound communications is fine documented. “The autumn of the call is driven by 18 to 34-year-olds, whose average monthly sound minutes have plunged from concerning 1,200 to 900 in the former two years, according to investigation by Nielsen.
“Texting among 18 to 24-year-olds has additional than doubled in the identical period,” wrote Ian Shapira of the Washington Post before this year.
The Nielsen Co. additionally notes that folks below the age of 24 content additional frequently than they call, viewing the out-of-the-blue call as tantamount to an intrusion. (Source)
But I cognize not everyone agrees. A quick Google was all it took to reveal additional modern-day curmudgeons:
…People continually say texting is additional convenient than talking on the phone, but in many situations, it would obtain small period to do it the old-fashioned way. Why not fair call the individual and get the conversation complete in five seconds fairly than continuing a lengthy cord of content messages that takes 10 minutes? It’s called efficiency. — Minnesota Public Radio, January 2010
Which is not to minimize the lawful issues alongside communicating via content — for example, sarcasm and spirit of sound can frequently be misinterpreted.
In fact, for everyone who’s sent an email or Facebook communication that’s provoked the contrary reply than you intended (myself included), I don’t average to add criticism to hurt here, but…
Socrates is laughing at all of us.
