The Price of Progress. To the Question of the Benefits of Writing

The article analyzes an episode of the Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus about the harm of writing to human cognitive abilities. Relying on a number of ancient sources, the author shows that the Greeks of the classical and earlier periods gave priority to the oral word over the written one, primarily in the field of legal proceedings, where written evidence was not considered self-sufficient, could easily be challenged in court by the opposing party and performed only an auxiliary function. The article also exposes the myth about the exclusive role of writing in the formation and development of ancient civilizations in general and Ancient Greece in particular. It is emphasized that even after the acquisition of writing, many cultures were wary of it, seeing the danger of degradation. It was believed that a person who entrusted information to paper, parchment, or clay tablets ceased to develop memory and to use the brain as a means of storing information. In addition, important and secret information placed on a particular material carrier is in danger of being stolen, read by enemies or ill-wishers, destroyed in a fire, natural disasters, etc. The author of the article notes that the “oral culture”, which was the property not only of the Greeks but also all Indo-European peoples, has not disappeared, remaining in the field of the most important information – when making secret political decisions, in the military sphere, etc. The hypothesis is put forward that the catastrophe of the Dark Ages, which plunged Greece and other Mediterranean countries into the darkness of ignorance and barbarism for three centuries, could have been a consequence of the introduction of writing.Having lost the ability to memorize long texts and entrusting the most important information to “external carriers”, people of the Bronze Age could easily lose it for a number of reasons. The price of progress turned out to be extremely high for the peoples of the Mycenaean era. Recalling the consequences of that collapse, the author of the article calls for more careful consideration of the arguments deployed by modern opponents of digitalization. 

Keywords: history of philosophy, oral civilizations, Ancient Greece, Plato, Phaedrus, writing, memory, digitalization