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Warning: This web at
toLearn.net/marketing/ is two years old, it's unattended, and the
links are rotting. However, in June 2000, the
server recorded over 10,000 page requests during more than 3,000 visitor sessions from dozens of
countries. Thus, I'm reluctant to take it down completely. Ricci Street | MBA 604 | marketing |
The Monk at the Machine Socrates on Writing
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. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt. To the king came Theuth and showed his inventions. King Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. Then they came to letters. Theuth said: Using letters will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories. It is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. King 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. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of
your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have. For this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories. They will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence. You give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth.
Plato
(360 BC) Phaedrus
Doug's note Plato recorded this little fable by Socrates about 2,500 years ago. The distrust of literacy goes back a long way. When it comes to visual literacy, you face the same prejudice in education, in the organization you work for (unless you're in the advertising department), and probably in yourself. If pictures aren't real, if they're frivolous, why do so many people spend so much time watching TV? See Kevin Hunt's "Plea for Visual Literacy" in last June's CMC magazine for an explanation of the Web's challenge to our visual skills. By the way, Socrates never wrote anything; he was illiterate. Words "by" him were written by his pupil Plato. Perhaps Socrates just mistrusted any other way of knowing, which written language certainly is. So is visual language.
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