History of Media: How Every New Medium Was Feared
A tour from clay tablets to social feeds, showing how each new medium reshaped what people know and how they talk.
Try 3 questions
1. In Plato's Phaedrus, what does Socrates warn that writing will do to people?
- Make public speeches far too long to follow
- Spread dangerous ideas among the common people
- Weaken memory and give only the look of wisdom
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Answer: Weaken memory and give only the look of wisdom
Socrates argues that relying on written marks will erode memory and give readers the appearance of wisdom without understanding.
2. What were most of the earliest cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia actually used for?
- Accounting records of goods and rations
- Religious hymns sung in the temples
- Epic poems such as Gilgamesh
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Answer: Accounting records of goods and rations
The oldest tablets from Uruk record quantities of grain, livestock and labor; literature came centuries later.
3. Milman Parry studied how oral poets performed long epics. What did he find they relied on?
- Free improvisation with no repeated phrases
- A fixed text memorized word for word
- Stock formulaic phrases that fit the meter
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Answer: Stock formulaic phrases that fit the meter
Parry showed that phrases like 'swift-footed Achilles' are ready-made building blocks that let a singer compose fluently in performance.
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