Aislinn Raftis

Digital Rhetoric
Critical Analysis II
Writing, technology, and the same old fears
Walter Ong writes a critique of Phaedrus. I love a good critique of
Phaedrus, mainly because I dislike the premises within the text, the
ideas, the characters and the author. I even wrote my portfolio
introductory essay about the Phaedrus and how I, in the midst of
second orality, love writing and view it as a way to connect with
readers across time and distance and share a particular idea or
moment by inspiring their own unique memories of similar experiences
or thoughts.
All Platonic discussions aside, I thought there were some
interesting points of overlap in both Ongs work and Kellys Wired
article. Both reference a fear about collective and individual memory
loss. Kevin Kelly says,
What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on
what the Machine knows - about us and about what we
want to know. We already find it easier to Google
something a second or third time rather than remember it
ourselves. The more we teach this megacomputer, the
more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will
become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In
2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't
feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy.
This quote is eerily similar to the story of Theuth and Thamus. Thamus,
King of Egypt, fears this new invention called writing, invented by
Theuth, a god of games (and also, I believe, of death). He fears it
because, according to Platos Socrates, students will rely on writing as

a crutch for memory and will lose sight of the Truth that can only
communicated by a verbal exchange and recall of ideas. (Baloney). He
is afraid that they will appear to be educated, learned and wise, while
in reality they will be so far removed from omniscience that they will
know nothing.
Incidentally, Thamus argument sounds eerily similar to the
criticisms leveled (by Plato, in writing and presumably in speech) at the
Sophists. Mere rhetoric. Empty words and promises. Manipulating the
minds of men. They will not know what to believe. Corrupters of Truth!
Now, we cannot conceive of the world without our literate lens.
As Ong points out, it is impossible for us to imagine an abstract word
without picturing the letters. It affects even our identity. Sure, I can be
defined by the particular order of sounds that make up my name, but I
am also represented by the various letters in the sequence A I S L I N
N. I look at the word Aislinn and I think me! Kevin Kelly articulates
this phenomenon in his article too. He is prophesizing that computers
and the Internet will also compromise our identities.
Ong relates writing to practicing a musical instrument. It is
second, but not first nature. It requires practice. Writing also requires
practice. Kelly makes the argument that we are currently giving the
computer practice at what is important to us. We are practicing our
new method of living and of seeing the world. We are practicing second

orality, and by the end of both these pieces, I cant decide if that is
something to be celebrated or fought.