A history of media technology scares, from the printing press to Facebook.

Interesting article on slate. Best quote:

"To date, studies suggest there is no consistent evidence that the Internet causes mental problems."

Clearly they haven't studied the regular users of this forum.

Hm. Sounds like a case of the chicken or the egg.

I'd argue many of us had a few screws loose at the outset, before we even knew about iStock and started posting here regularly

Exhibit A: Our newest grandpa.

Really neat article Rob, but I think the point that it misses is that some of those anti-information overload prophets were right about the effects of the changes that they observed.

Socrates warned that writing would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories."

And he was right! Evidence suggests that all this information being available outside our heads really has decreased our memory and changed culture as a result: orality in our daily lives has all but completely disappeared and been replaced with other, more 'modern' modes of discourse.  How many people do you know who can read a poem?  How many people do you know that can recite one?

It's easy to argue that none of this is actually bad, but either way the claims that media critics have made across the centuries aren't entirely foolish, and they're accurate often enough to justify taking a discussion of their implciations seriously.

That's a great point, Eric. Until the introduction of phones with "memory" I easily knew 30 or more numbers of my closest friends and family by heart. Now ... not. Today I probably have a mere 5 or 6 numbers in my mental Rolodex.

Neolithic Times Headline:

Reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ15vUjgqvw

I already forgot what I just read!

So true. I have one of those brains that remembers numbers very well. Since I got a mobile I can hardly remember my own. I should be able to remember something else better as a result of not having to remember numbers, but I just don't seem to be able to. I blame my children.

In the early days of the motor car, people thought that their heads might explode if they travelled at over 30mph. To date, studies suggest there is no consistent evidence that this is the case.

I think the winter olympics have showed that there are plenty of ways to let gravity accelerate you to over 30mph without any interal combustion!

None, but sadly I know a couple of people who write them.

I did a course which included an 'oral tradition' component where inter alia they had filmed a very old Gaelic storyteller from one of the islands (I think in the 1960s when he was IIRC in his 90s). He was the traditional storyteller of his village, telling stories which were passed on, with the role, from father to son. They filmed him telling a story lasting about an hour, then went back a year later and he told the same story, with only about six words different. He had never been to school and was totally illiterate.


I often tell pupils that memory gets poorer with writing - if we need to remember 20 things we must get at the shops, we can just write a list - no nned to remember anything (except where you put the note!)


Reciting poems would be pretty general in people of my age - most of us can do at least one Burns poem, courtesy of learning them for Burns Federation competitions. For some reason, learning poems 'off by heart' was considered an important element in our education.  Actually the tradition continues: lots of the primary schools still enter weans for Burns Federation competitions.


I usually do Matilda as a party piece for the S1s around Fireworks Night. Great fun. Huh - one secretly filmed me on his mobile and I had to threaten GBH to force him to erase it before it got to his Bebo page.

With a bit of brushing up I could do Nod (Walter de la Mer).

On the other hand there are many folk and pop songs that I can quote from end to end.

However, the words of many pop songs are at least partially indistinguishable. I love the song Ironic (Alanis Morissette), but it wasn't until I heard a very good 'tribute' version that I heard the lyric clearly.

Regarding knowing people who write poetry, it is true, there is nothing more embarrassing than having someone pin you to a wall and regaling you with verse after verse of self-generated rhyme. I think it's uncomfortable because you are under pressure to 'appreciate' the output. At least with the Vogon (Hitch-hikers' Guide To The Galaxy'), he knew that offering to read his poetry out loud constituted a threat.

Awwwwwhhhhhh, that's so sweet of you to notice  

I was travelling on a boat in Turkey twenty years ago and we stopped at a little port and went out for dinner at the only restaurant in town. There were ten of us. The waiter took our order for drinks and didn't write them down but brought them all out correctly which was quite impressive. We nicknamed him "The Memory Man". When it came to ordering food we decided to test him so we all chose different starters and main dishes and side orders - maybe thirty different dishes, with as many extras and special requirements as we could think of. He still didn't write them down and brought our order - each dish correct and served to the right person.  We went back the next night and instead of ordering, we sat round the table in a different seating plan and ordered the same again! Of course it all came perfectly once again. It turned out he had been a fisherman and had never learned to read or write, hence the fantastic memory.