Since one of the themes of this blog is that history tends to recapitulate, I wasn't surprised to be reminded that the attitudes toward the web and other new media are reflected in attitudes toward other "new" media in the past.
I was, however, mildly surprised to find a statement of the "problem" as far back as Socrates. To wit:
"The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to external written characters and not remember of themselves. . . You give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things and have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing."
-- Socrates, "Phaedrus"
Quoted by Marshall McLuhan in "The Medium Is The Massage"
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