Wired author Ryan Singel wrote an article about the Huffington Post “being accused of slimy business practices by a handful of smaller publications who say the site is unfairly copying and publishing their content.” Singel quotes Moser, an editor at alternative weekly Chicago Reader, saying:
If the future of journalism – which everyone keeps telling me The Huffington Post represents – is a bunch of search-engine optimization scams, we have bigger problems than Sam Zell’s bad investment strategies.
Let me quote Plato in Phaedrus.
Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth... he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. ...To him came Theuth and showed his inventions... when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them ...this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls ...the specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.
Nobody challenges the importance of letters in our world any more, not even philosophers who use them for elaborating their thoughts. Socrates was not an ordinary philosopher, but a wise and enlightened man who reached spiritual heights beyond conceptual thoughts.
But the rest of us know how important letters are and how they as a medium have been used for keeping power. If Don Abbondio in the novel The Betrothed used the power of latinorum on the simple Renzo, the power of literacy nowadays is replicated in bureaucratic or legal language. The power of that medium is so vast that every socially advanced country rightly cares for the literacy of its citizens as a basic human right. The flip side of literacy is, as Neil Postman writes in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage Books, 1993, p. 9):
Thamus warns that the pupils of Theuth will develop an undeserved reputation for wisdom. He means to say that those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence.
Do Thamus’s warnings apply to today’s media and technological skills, and how? Have people who blog or have popular Internet sites become an elite group?
Article comments
1 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
We should not forget that Nazism developed in one of the most culturally advanced countries of the times
Give me a f*cking break! The Germans/Nazis were motivated by Hitler's propaganda,charm & persuasion,
NOT f*cking technology!!
*UGH*
2 - Ivo Quartiroli
Correct Brian. Charm, persuasion and propaganda were stronger than culture. I did not say that technology or culture were responsable of Nazism, of course not. However, the advancements in culture or technology don't necessarily produce better human beings, nor they necessarily advance freedom and, as we witnessed several times in history, not even our capacity to resist manipulation. And probably not even our capacity to discriminate the truth in what is written on blogcritics or to be polite :-)
3 - Brian aka Guppusmaximus
I can definitely see your point but you are using a fear tactic to support your opinion that technology is in of itself a possible danger to society with which I highly disagree. People are a possible danger to a society not technology. I apologize for my foul mouth, I just get disgusted with how it has become so easy,nowadays, for people to refer to Hitler & Nazis with such ease on topics that have no basis.
4 - Roy Hayward
I don't find the geeks all that tiresome, but then I am one of them, so.....
In honesty I have a couple of older siblings that went through school before the introduction of the microcomputer. And there is a noticeable difference in the career, life, and technology choices we have made.
Because of this up close and personal observation, I have a concerns for the future or our rapidly progressing and changing technology. And this is not a fear for my older sibs, but for myself. I fear that I will be left behind.
I don't know if this is exactly the 360 degree perspective that you are referring to, but it is a less than bright side of the tidal wave of technological progress. As for famine and wars, well, technology and the internet haven't quite finished evolving yet, so we will just have to see.
5 - Mark
I don't think it's a coinidence that I chose programming when I recently debated "What should I learn next?" Programmers will certainly be in demand going forward, and make a decent living (or at least a better one than writers!). As technology keeps moving forward, they're going to be the ones holding the proverbial leash on the doberman.
6 - Roger Nowosielski
Why would you want to put the leash on writers?
7 - Roger Nowosielski
"Are Bloggers a New Elite?"
I don't think there's any fear of that, Ivo. I assume, of course, that by "bloggers" you're referring mainly to writers, intellectuals, the "scribe" class of old.
Only in Europe (Italy, France, even Germany perhaps), the intellectual has a voice. Umberto Ecco, for example, you must know that, is a regular contributor to many journals. In France, we think of Lacan, Derrida, and of course Sartre and Camus. But this is good ol' USA. Intellectuals have always been distrusted here, called "eggheads," and consequently marginalized. (I myself harbor a kind of distrust given these conditions.) Which is precisely why it is so difficult in America to present a new, cogent and coherent idea. It is so liable to being dismissed.
You're perfectly right, however, insofar as you remark on the relationship between technology and wisdom. Technology is only the means and those who pursue it for its own sake are shallow.
8 - rrnman
New Elite?!!!
Gimme a break!