When I was teaching at Columbia University, techno-prophet Marshall McLuhan came down from Toronto to lecture there. He talked about how the linear pattern of information resulting from print technology limited the thought patterns of people who learned from printed books. Word follows word, line follows line, paragraph follows paragraph, page … | Mel Alexenberg reporting the words of Marshall McLuhan Continue reading The Book Medium Is a Stronger Message Than Its Content Marshall McLuhan
In this book, The printing press as an agent of change, Elizabeth Eisenstein conducts an extensive survey of the literature on the three intellectual and social movements of the period 1400–1700: the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution. She also examines the major hypotheses as to their causes and progress and reassesses … Continue reading The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein (1980)
In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates shares the myth of Thamus and Theuth, questioning the invention of writing. Writing, he argues, weakens memory and offers the appearance of wisdom without true understanding. Socrates suggests that serious discourse using the dialectic method is a nobler pursuit, leading to genuine wisdom and happiness. Continue reading The Myth of Thamus and Theuth Does writing allow the pretense of understanding, rather than true understanding?
