You will find in Plato’s Phaedrus a story about Thamus, the king of a

great city of Upper Egypt. For people such as ourselves, who are inclined (in

Thoreau’s phrase) to be tools of our tools, few legends are more instructive

than his. The story, as Socrates tells it to his friend Phaedrus, unfolds in

the following way: Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who was the

inventor of many things, including number, calculation, geometry, astronomy,

and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that

they should be made widely known and available to Egyptians. Socrates

continues:

Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through

them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he judged Theuth’s

claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all

that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth’s

inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, “Here is an

accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom

and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for

memory and wisdom.” To this, Thamus replied, “Theuth,, my paragon of

inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm

which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the

father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it

quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to

exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to

bring thins to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own

internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection,

not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputations

for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without

proper instructions, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when

they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the

conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”

I begin my book with this legend because in Thamus’ response there are several

sound principles from wich we may begin to learn how to think with wise

circumspection about a technological society. In fact, there is even one error

in the judgment of Thamus, from which we may also learn something of

importance. The error is not in his claim that writing will damage memory and

create false wisdom. It is demonstrable that writing has had such an effect.

Thamus’ error is in his believing that writing will be a burden to society and

nothing but a burden. For all his wisdom, he fails to imagine what writing’s

benefits might be, which, as we know, have been considerable. We may learn

from this that it is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has

a one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not

either-or, but this-and-that. Nothing could be more obvious, of course,

especially to those who have given more than two minutes of thought to the

matter. Nonetheless, we are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous

Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are

incapable of imagining what they will undo. We might call such people

Technophiles. They gaze on technology as a lover does on his beloved, seeing

it as without blemish and entertaining no apprehension for the future. They

are therefore dangerous and are to be approached cautiously. On the other

hand, some one-eyed prophets, such as I (or so I am accused), are inclined to

speak only of burdens (in the manner of Thamus) and are silent about the

opportunities that new technologies make possible. The Technophiles must speak

for themselves, and do so all over the place. My defense is that a dissenting

voice is sometimes needed to moderate the din made by the enthusiastic

multitudes. If one is to err, it is better to err on the side of Thamusian

skepticism. But it is an error nonetheless. And I might note that, with the

exceptions of his judgment on writing, Thamus does not repeat this error. You

might notice on rereading the legend that he gives arguments for and against

each of Theuth’s inventions. For it is inescapable that every culture must

negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain

is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away. The wise know

this well, and are rarely impressed by dramatic technological changes, and

never overjoyed. Here, for example, is Freud on the matter, from his doleful

Civilization and Its Discontents:

One would like to ask: is there, then no positive gain in pleasure, no

unequivocal increase in my feeling on happiness, if I can, as often as

I please, hear the voice of a child of mine who is living hundreds of

miles away or if I can learn in the shortest possible time after a friend

has reached his destination that he has come through the long and

difficult voyages unharmed? Does it mean nothing that medicine has

succeeded in enormously reducing infant mortality and the danger of

infection for women in childbirth, and, indeed, in considerably

lengthening the average life of a civilized man?

Freud knew full well that technical and scientific advances are not to be taken

lightly, which is why he begins this passage by acknowledging them. But he

ends it by reminding us of what they have undone:

If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would

never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to

hear his voice; if traveling across the ocean by ship had not been

introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage

and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. What

is the use of reducing infantile mortality when it is precisely that

reduction which imposes the greatest restraint on us in the begetting

of children, so that, taken all round, we nevertheless rear no more

children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the

same time we have created difficult conditions for our sexual life in

marriage…And, finally, what good to us is a long life if it is difficult

and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only

welcome death as a deliverer?

In tabulating the cost of technological progress, Freud takes a rather

depressing line, that of a man who agrees with Thoreau’s remark that our

inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end. The Technophile would

surely answer Freud by saying that life has always been barren of joys and full

of misery but that the telephone, ocean liners, and especially the reign of

hygiene have not only lengthened life but made it a more agreeable

proposition. That is certainly an argument I would make (thus proving I am no

one-eyed Technophobe), but it is not necessary at this point to pursue it. I

have brought Freud into the conversation only to show that a wise man—even one

of such a woeful countenance—must begin his critique of technology by

acknowledging its successes. Had King Thamus been as wise as reputed, he would

not have forgotten to include in his judgment a prophecy about the powers that

writing would enlarge. There is a calculus of technological change that

requires a measure of even-handedness.

So much for Thamus’ error of omission. There is another omission

worthy of note, but it is no error. Thamus simply takes it for granted—and

therefore does not feel it necessary to say—that writing is not a neutral

technology whose good or harm depends on the uses made of it. He knows that

the uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the

technology itself—that is, that its functions follow from its form. This is

why Thamus is concerned not with what people will write; he is concerned that

people will write. It is absurd to imagine Thamus advising, in the manner of

today’s standard-brand Technophiles, that, if only writing would be used for

the production of certain kinds of texts and not others (let us say, for

dramatic literature but not for history or philosophy), its disruptions could

be minimized. He would regard such counsel as extreme naïveté. He would

allow, I imagine, that a technology may be barred entry to a culture. But we

may learn from Thamus the following: once a technology is admitted, it plays

out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what

that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture,

we must do so with our eyes wide open.

From Chapter 1 of Technopoly, “The Judgement of Thamus,” by Neil Postman.