Plato’s caveat

The acquisition of the venerable Washington Post by Jeff Bezos seems like one more sign that the internet is literally devouring printed media. Where will it all lead?

Plato took on the voice of his teacher Socrates to deride the rise of printed media. His ersatz Socrates argued that the ability to write everything down would be the death of memory, of direct human transmission of culture and wisdom, of personal intellectual responsibility.

Plato was being coy, for he knew full well that he was using the written word to make these arguments. They have, in fact, come down to us thanks to the ability of written language to transmit human culture across a span of centuries.

One day, sometime in the future, people may laugh at the absurdity of fretting over the death of print. “How silly people were to worry,” they might say, as they gaze into a re-constructed past through implanted lenses. “We wouldn’t even know about any of this, if it weren’t for the internet!”