… Right now I’m looking at a copy of the Phaedrus, a fictional conversation between Socrates and a young Athenian named Phaedrus.
     Socrates is trying to convince the young man that speech is better than written communication, or any recorded communication including film. According to Socrates, the god Theuth in ancient Egypt invented numbers and calculations and gambling and geometry and astronomy… and Theuth invented writing. Then he presented his inventions to the great god-king Thamus, asking which of them should be presented to the Egyption people.
     Thamus ruled that writing was a pharmakon. Like the word “drug” it could be used for good or bad. It could cure or poison.
     According to Thamus, writing would allow humans to extend their memories and share information. But, more important, writing would allow humans to rely too much on these external means of recording. Our own memories would wither and fail. Our notes and records would replace our minds.
     Worse than that, written information can’t teach, according to Thamus. You can’t question it, and it can’t defend itself when people misunderstand or misrepresent it. Written communcation gives people what Thamus called “the false conceit of knowledge,” a fake certainty that they understand something.
     So, all those videotapes of your childhood, will they really give you a better understanding of yourself? Or will they just shore up whatever faulty memories you have? Can they replace your ability to sit down and ask your family questions? To learn from your grandparents.
     If Thamus were here, I’d tell him that memory itself is a pharmakon.

     -from Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk