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The thing is, back before writing became prevalent, Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience watching a performanc

The thing is, back before writing became prevalent, Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience watching a performance, then afterwards, writing down the entire thing from memory. Similarly, _The Metamorphoses_, and _The Iliad_, and _The Odyssey_ were part of an oral tradition and their structures were created to as to facilitate memorization and recitation --- how many poems can you recite from memory? Marshall McLuhan warned that each extension of what people can do aided by technology is accompanied by an amputation of what folks will do/learn/be capable of unaided: https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/05/30/marshall-mcluhan-extensions-and-amputations/ https://stream.syscoi.com/2019/05/30/marshall-mcluhan-extens...

SoftTalker 1y ago
I couldn't even read those books. Forget about memorizing them.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  It wasn't that long ago that books were so rare/valuable/difficult to have access to that folks would read and memorize pretty much everything they could lay their hands on.
- watwut 1y ago
  It is because you read the translation that intentionally translated them into obscure hard to understand and interpret language. So that they poem feels more ancient and "serious" to reader. But originally they were written in the language of the time and in the way that made them easy to remember for contemporaries. They had rhythm, because that is easier to remember. They contained a lot of repetition, because that is easier to remember.
Wild_Dolphins 1y ago
>Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience... writing down the entire thing from memory. This would have been VERY difficult as Shakespeare wrote plays in iambic-pentameter, a form of decasyllabic verse; which could be considered a kind of very-loose 'checksum'. The audience member who was pirating-Shakespeare plays would have to recall the dialog-from-the-play absolutely perfectly to render it in the original iambic-pentameter. Possible, but super tricky. Shakespeare has built-in copy-protection. Renaissance style.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  Actually, iambic-pentameter functions as a checksum, making it easier to arrive at the correct text.
SamPatt 1y ago
Yes, and we've lost something, but hasn't this tradeoff likely been worthwhile? Reading may impact memorization but externalizing knowledge obviously had immense benefits. If yes, then how do we know the next tradeoff won't also be worthwhile?
- WillAdams 1y ago
  I don't see how rate-limiting one's access to knowledge to video speeds due to illiteracy, and removing the ability to take/read useful/usable notes could be helpful. When I was in college, I was volunteered to take notes for a student who had a disability which precluded their taking notes in Art History class, so I would fax my notes to the secretary's office from my Newton MessagePad, which notes included sketches of each of the slides (many of which were not in the textbook) as well as page references to the textbook (since I brought mine in to class and followed along in it during the lectures) --- turns out the notes were shared with the everyone else taking the class in the dorm, resulting in a marked improvement in GPA and a lowered failure rate --- until the textbook was changed from Janson to Gardner a couple of years later.

SoftTalker 1y ago

I couldn't even read those books. Forget about memorizing them.

WillAdams 1y ago
It wasn't that long ago that books were so rare/valuable/difficult to have access to that folks would read and memorize pretty much everything they could lay their hands on.
watwut 1y ago
It is because you read the translation that intentionally translated them into obscure hard to understand and interpret language. So that they poem feels more ancient and "serious" to reader. But originally they were written in the language of the time and in the way that made them easy to remember for contemporaries. They had rhythm, because that is easier to remember. They contained a lot of repetition, because that is easier to remember.

Wild_Dolphins 1y ago

>Shakespeare would worry that his plays would be plagiarized by someone in the audience... writing down the entire thing from memory. This would have been VERY difficult as Shakespeare wrote plays in iambic-pentameter, a form of decasyllabic verse; which could be considered a kind of very-loose 'checksum'. The audience member who was pirating-Shakespeare plays would have to recall the dialog-from-the-play absolutely perfectly to render it in the original iambic-pentameter. Possible, but super tricky. Shakespeare has built-in copy-protection. Renaissance style.

WillAdams 1y ago
Actually, iambic-pentameter functions as a checksum, making it easier to arrive at the correct text.

SamPatt 1y ago

Yes, and we've lost something, but hasn't this tradeoff likely been worthwhile? Reading may impact memorization but externalizing knowledge obviously had immense benefits. If yes, then how do we know the next tradeoff won't also be worthwhile?

WillAdams 1y ago
I don't see how rate-limiting one's access to knowledge to video speeds due to illiteracy, and removing the ability to take/read useful/usable notes could be helpful. When I was in college, I was volunteered to take notes for a student who had a disability which precluded their taking notes in Art History class, so I would fax my notes to the secretary's office from my Newton MessagePad, which notes included sketches of each of the slides (many of which were not in the textbook) as well as page references to the textbook (since I brought mine in to class and followed along in it during the lectures) --- turns out the notes were shared with the everyone else taking the class in the dorm, resulting in a marked improvement in GPA and a lowered failure rate --- until the textbook was changed from Janson to Gardner a couple of years later.