Summary of The Judgment of Thamus Katkd 1703 PDF

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It is the Summary of the Chapter titled as "Judgement of Thamus" from the prescribed textbook for the course CMNS110 ...

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Summary of The Judgment of Thamus Kedar Kattimani KATKD1703

Neil Postman uses the legend in Plato’s Phaedrus (a story of King Thamus told by Socrates to his friend Phaedrus) as a perfect example of Technopoly: the effects of new technology as to how consumers use it, think about it, its consequence in our culturescape, and hence overall evolution of humans and technology. The legend entails Theuth exhibiting his inventions to Thamus which he concludes with a mixed inference to weather or not it will be useful to his people. Theuth emphasises particularly on the invention of writing, he claims that this invention is the ultimate receipt for memory and wisdom. Whereas Thamus disagrees to this and argues that those who will gain this skill (writing) will stop utilizing memory and rely on external sources, hence rather than being a receipt for memory it is a receipt for recollection and when it comes to wisdom the consumers will receive information without any proper instruction and in consequence become narcissistic about their wisdom.

We may learn from this judgment that it is ridiculous to imagine that any technological innovation has one sided effect. Neil states that there are so called one – eyed personalities called as Technophiles who only talk about the goodness that new technology brings and on the other hand there are personalities called as Technophobes, who talk about burdens of new technology. He refers to Freud who writes ion Civilization and its Discontents about advantages of having telephone, medical advances, ocean liners because of which the various tasks he can do followed by its disadvantages. Hence inferring the point that Thamus ignored while he was criticizing about writing, that we should understand the structure and function of technology and we should admit it with wide – eyed perspective.

We also learn from Thamus’s Judgment that with introduction of new technology we create new terminologies or replace the meaning of a word with a new one. This is clearly seen when he connects memory with recollection and wisdom with knowledge.

Neil also points to the fact that Thamus talks about the unnecessary overrated reputation that people referred as “Winner” who have access to the new technology develop to those who don’t referred as “Losers”. He uses the example of Computers used in Schools, High – level Physics, Military etc. who are the supposed “Winners” and nothing beneficial happens to those who don’t use this Technology who are the supposed “Losers”.

Since the changes bought by the new technology is more or less hidden. In other words, it changes the very fundamental nature of what a particular thing means to a person. Hence, it is not clear in the early stages of technology who will gain and lose by it. For example, considering the Internet, we are bombarded with so many news that we are not able differentiate which one of them is real and which one is fake. This is what Thamus was pointing at when he referred to people who get used to the new technology but then they rely on external resources rather than relying on internal resources (Intellectual, Intuition). The knowledge of consumers also matters when it comes to judging new technology. For example, if the concept of grading with numbers or Letter was introduced to Galileo or Shakespeare it wouldn’t make any sense to them to assign numbers or letters to one’s creativity, intelligence or how much intellectual a person is but to us it makes sense because our mind is used to it since our childhood.

There’s also one more aspect of new technology that we should keep in mind about i.e whenever a new technology is introduced to a culture no one, not even the inventor can predict it’s future. For example, considering the invention of mechanical clock which was done by people of church had its aim to give a schedule for daily prayers, but fast forward to present times, it is used by common people to increase their

productivity and efficiency dramatically. One more such example is Internet, it was invented in late 19th century by the government of USA for its military purposes. But fast forward to our present times it is used everywhere in our day to day life. Another principle of introducing a new technology is that old technology is always dominated by the newer one. We can see this when printing technology was introduced in education institutions. The preference for teaching method was given more through printing rather then oral method, but now with the introduction of computers, we might even think that orality method might become extinct. Hence, A new technology changes the whole ecology of the culturescape rather than adding or subtracting features....