Posted on 05/30/2014 3:25:36 PM PDT by NYer
Plato worried that the new media called “writing” would ruin our memories – and he was right.
“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”
Martin Heidegger and other philosophers worried that the typewriter would make our thinking more mechanical. They were right, too.
Each new medium has diminished man a little – radio made us expect to be entertained all the time; television hurt our ability to concentrate – even as each has added scope, ease and distance to his ability to communicate with others.
The Church has promoted each new medium (from radio onward, anyway), and it should – focusing on the good a new media can do, despite the risks. (Tomorrow, I will post: “How New Media Are Enhancing Our Lives”.)
June 1 is World Communications Day, and Pope Francis properly promotes today’s even newer media in his World Communications Address … but first, he explains some of the drawbacks.
I’ve noticed some too.
Cameraphones ruin moments, forever. A recent study says so but we all already know it. In the middle of quality time with our family, we scramble for our phone such that we focus not on the beautiful, moving, enriching moments, but on the self-referential act of capturing them. Then we take a picture that never gets printed, and rarely gets seen, and are left with a compromised memory of a compromised event on top of it.
Facebook is training in narcissism. The exaggerated feelings of self-importance a narcissist feels make the world feel like a movie starring them. So does Facebook. It forces us to recast activities in our mind in marketing language that will make them seem fascinating to others. We don’t just go to the park with our kids looking to enjoy each others company, we go to the park with our kids looking for a sharable moment. We hate the way TMZ treats celebrities’ personal lives; we are the TMZ of our own life on Facebook.
TVs in restaurants tell us our lives are inadequately interesting. It used to be that you had to go to a sports bar if you wanted to watch TV in public. Now TVs seem to be everywhere. Their message is clear: You, and what you have to say, is not quite interesting enough to sustain the attention of the person you are with. They need distractions to bear being with you. And television, a world where everyone is an entertainer, is the distraction par excellence.
That pornography is now commonplace teaches us that others exist for our pleasure. Real people have personalities, needs and demands. They require affection and appreciation and gratitude. Moments in which they allow our desires and wishes to dominate their actions and thoughts only come when we are willing to do the same for them. But pornography creates a fantasy world in which all of that “realness” seems intolerably tedious and virtual sex slaves become our new ideal of pleasure. Or, in other words, it expands the television world where everyone is an entertainer into our most intimate lives.
Smart phones’ browsers replace wonder and memory with Google search skills. Instant gratification of our material desires leaves us unable to build long-term, long-lasting satisfaction over time. We grow impatient with every pleasure that isn’t in our reach. Instant intellectual gratification does the same thing to our minds. Before, if we wanted to know who directed Twelve Angry Men or whose picture is on the two dollar bill or how many feet are in a mile, we either had to use our memories, ask a friend, or make a conscious decision not to care. Now we can Google it from wherever we are and what Plato feared from writing is true to a horrifying degree: Our memories are truncated and our wonder is fading away.
Together, all of this gives smartphones a creepy outsized place in our lives. Friends have always been invaluable: They are there to assist us, divert us, coax us to generosity, and lend an extra brain where necessary. Friends are still invaluable, but phones have inserted themselves into large swaths of the territory loved ones once occupied.
Our phone is the first thing we interact with in the morning and the last thing we interact with at night. Our phone catches us up on the news over breakfast, and we need our phone to capture our moments during the day to fill the newsfeeds of our lives. Our phone has games to divert us, and is a portablewindow into the the world of entertainers that exists for our pleasure that we need to escape into.
We can relate to AT&T’s new commercials and almost miss how creepy they are: People talk about the phones in their history as if they were people.
So … what could possibly be good about all this? Tune in tomorrow …
Ping!
So we sit in a cave and wait to die?
Do you disagree with all of these assertions? I found the article to be refreshing. Is there some reason why we need to have tv screens in a restaurant? What is wrong with conversation? It can be challenging to grab someone's attention in conversation when their eyes are focused on a tv screen. As for the the cell phone's ability to "record the moment", what actually happens to those memories? Are these preserved for future viewing or relegated to a moment in time that has just passed, and we move on?
The author has addressed your question with the final statement: So … what could possibly be good about all this? Tune in tomorrow … Please remind me to post the sequel.
“Tomorrow, I will post: “How New Media Are Enhancing Our Lives””
Add to the list of “shortest books ever written”.
Media is a result of WHO posts WHAT on it....I am on FB....but most of what I post is Political or historical...If you are a narcissist, it will just be a reflection of you no matter how you communicate...ie...I refuse to participate in the Happy Birthday activities...and i do NOT have my real birthday or city of birth listed
It’s all about moderation.
I do despise TVs in restaurants unless it’s a sports bar. I dont want CNN pumped into my face while I’m trying to eat.
My smartphone is very important to me as a way to keep in touch quickly and get useful info.
For the most part I do disagree. Too bad you never answered my question.
This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations. Yes, the internet has changed our lives in very dramatic ways. Some changes have been good. Some have been bad. In my case, my life was totally changed because of the internet and the World Wide Web. (emphasis on world wide)
Everything he says is true, of course. But there is another side. The new media are useful when used in moderation.
How would we know what Plato said about writing, if it hadn’t been written down? How likely would it be that we would have the Iliad and the Odyssey if they hadn’t been written down for us to read? Even if that makes it difficult to write more epics now?
Google search is probably bad for young people who would otherwise commit more stuff to memory. On the other hand, it’s very useful for an oldster like me, who remembers something vaguely but needs to use Google search to recover the details. You still need to remember enough to know what to look for.
Too much internet can be destructive, but without it, the MSM would be totally irresistible.
In other words, yes, there are two sides to the coin.
Indeed. The Internet has opened the news to Everyman.
The kind of people who get sucked into narcissism or pornography with technology would find other forms of expressing their character defects without it.
BTW, word processing is a gift from God, as far as I'm concerned.
My goal is to one be rich enough to leave electronics behind and never be bothered again.
As one formally educated in the use of a typewriter, I would have to concur. In my first job, each document typed included 5 onion skin papers, separated by carbon papers. If one mistake was made, the entire document was tossed and the process began anew. Hence, emphasis was placed on one's ability to type without error. Of course, once someone announced that no mistakes could be made, a mistake took place and the document was tossed.
The problem with word processing, however, is the introduction of spelling and grammar checkers. No need to describe how these systems fail; simply look to the web or your local newspaper for examples. Automation cannot distinguish between "to, too, and two" or "thru and through". The nuns taught us our grammar and I have never forgotten it. When working with word processing software, I turn off the spelling and grammar checkers.
Funny.
Went to our local outside, hip and upscale mall to take a friend to lunch.
The first two places were unbelievably loud. Food was asian themed and would have stayed too but, we had to raise oir voices to speak with the waitress. Too frickin much.
Went to the next place. Only a few people there but, easily communicated to with the waiter.
Had an awesome ribeye with some delish marrow that was easy to scoop.
Very pleasant atmosphere and enjoyed conversation with my friend.
Glad I’m not on FB.
I for one find the enhancement of information availability almost exhilarating. I am ‘old’ school, from before we had TV. We had one phone in the house and it was on a desk and was powered trough a cord. I had friends in the country who had big old phones with a crank, and they were on ‘party line’ because there weren’t enough phone lines to go around for everyone to have one. I remember when we had to go to the library and search manually through volumes to get a few pieces of information. I remember when we had to use Strong’s Concordance to find a passage in the Bible that we could partially remember, but did not know where. I remember when the first McDonald’s came to Des Moines where I grew up, and it was amazing that we could get a decent hamburger for 15 cents. I remember my Granddad’s 1934 Ford V8 four door (four ‘suicide’ doors), and it had a ‘trunk’ on the back. I learned to drive on that car, btw. My granddad lived with us in Des Moines. He was native of Sweden, and as a teenager made his way to Nebraska with brother, sister and parents.
And I remember my first computer, dos based pc with a 30 Meg hard drive. I learned on an IBM pc with two floppies but no hard drive. I learned to do ‘everything’ on that, and when I got my own with the 30 meg hard drive, a ‘computer expert’ friend of mine said, ‘you will never need that much hard drive!
It was not until the late 90’s that I learned about the internet and ‘web pages’. Wow, information. And we had our own novel web page that helped find long lost cousins. How about that!
Also in the mid 90’s I got my first ‘cell phone’. It was a ‘bag phone’. And expensive to use. But it worked unbelievably well as a communication devise. And after that I had various cell phones that were just phones! And then, finally, a year ago, I got my first ‘smart phone’. Yup, it is smart, and hope someday I will catch up with it. But I am learning to like it. Even given over to texting, but NEVER while driving! An accident waiting to happen!
Today we have, if we want it, information overload. And as a researcher, I am whole heartedly in favor of the availability of information. I thrive on information. And at my age, it is astounding that I can access information about ‘anything’! And I am an information ‘hog’. I have the capacity to remember much of what I read, and save it on my pc so can find it again with searches.
Wow, if I could have ‘secretly’ had all this info at my fingertips, literally, I could have been a ‘real boy wonder’. No wonder kids are so smart today!
But I am a year and a half away from being an octogenarian, and I ain’t done learning yet!
So no, the new media are not destroying our lives, unless we are ‘sheeple’. I am not ‘sheeple’. I will never let all the technology control me. My plan is to control it to my benefit. I have clients who depend on what I know through my research. I will benefit those clients by my relentless search for knowledge. We can be masters of what otherwise would master us.
“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”
With all due respect to Plato, there is more stuff to remember now than there was then. It can't all be passed down orally. Someone has to take notes.
Besides, folks wrote before Plato. Was he being facetious?
Add to the list of “shortest books ever written”.
Believe me, I can be as cynical as anyone. That said, even if the only entry in that "shortest book ever written" is "FreeRepublic.com," that fact alone will make it all worth it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.