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Books, of course have been thought of as subversive in earlier times. Even not that long ago. Book burnings, calls to ban particular books, all have occurred in

Books, of course have been thought of as subversive in earlier times. Even not that long ago. Book burnings, calls to ban particular books, all have occurred in living memory. Literacy itself has been seen as a threat.

mc32 8y ago
Were not detractors of books usually unlearned people; people who didn't base their opinions on studies of the effects, but rather based on their feels? On the other hand studies can be flawed and can be purposefully biased, so we have to watch for that. But if we have credible studies indicating harm from all the ways content producers and other want to retain eyeballs, then that's different, I think.
- evincarofautumn 8y ago
  Usually, perhaps, but learned people had their objections to reading & writing as well. This one’s pretty well known, although couched in a few layers of rhetoric that mean it’s usually presented without context (and misattributed to Socrates). In Phaedrus, written by Plato around 370 BC, the character of Socrates tells how when the Egyptian god Theuth gave the gift of writing to King Thamus, Thamus replied: “…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, 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.”
  - stan_rogers 8y ago
    Dude did have a point. Moving a large part of our memories outside of our skulls did change things quite a bit, just as leveraging the indexing and retrieval capabilities of computers (and systems of computers) has done more recently. We remember different things, and the way in which we remember those things is also different. It's not that we've lost the abilities of our ancestors; it's more that we've gotten out of the habit of using them. How many hundreds of songs do you have stored in your head? Imagine living in a world where your "textbooks" and "user manuals" are written to have similar rhyme, alliteration and rhythm, and are only passed orally. People did live in that world (many still do), and when that world ends, and none of the kids today can recite, for instance, Inside Macintosh - they have to use some sort of grimoire or codex instead - it's easy to see that as a loss. It's harder to see it as a lever.

mc32 8y ago

Were not detractors of books usually unlearned people; people who didn't base their opinions on studies of the effects, but rather based on their feels? On the other hand studies can be flawed and can be purposefully biased, so we have to watch for that. But if we have credible studies indicating harm from all the ways content producers and other want to retain eyeballs, then that's different, I think.

evincarofautumn 8y ago
Usually, perhaps, but learned people had their objections to reading & writing as well. This one’s pretty well known, although couched in a few layers of rhetoric that mean it’s usually presented without context (and misattributed to Socrates). In Phaedrus, written by Plato around 370 BC, the character of Socrates tells how when the Egyptian god Theuth gave the gift of writing to King Thamus, Thamus replied: “…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, 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.”
- stan_rogers 8y ago
  Dude did have a point. Moving a large part of our memories outside of our skulls did change things quite a bit, just as leveraging the indexing and retrieval capabilities of computers (and systems of computers) has done more recently. We remember different things, and the way in which we remember those things is also different. It's not that we've lost the abilities of our ancestors; it's more that we've gotten out of the habit of using them. How many hundreds of songs do you have stored in your head? Imagine living in a world where your "textbooks" and "user manuals" are written to have similar rhyme, alliteration and rhythm, and are only passed orally. People did live in that world (many still do), and when that world ends, and none of the kids today can recite, for instance, Inside Macintosh - they have to use some sort of grimoire or codex instead - it's easy to see that as a loss. It's harder to see it as a lever.