[Air-L] Plato and writing

[Janet Sternberg]

One more useful discussion of Plato's Phaedrus: chapter 1, "The Judgment 
of Thamus" of  Neil Postman's 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender of 
Culture to Technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly). 
Postman takes into account ideas of McLuhan and Ong, as well as others 
like Freud, Innis, and Mumford.

Regards,

Janet Sternberg, PhD
http://about.me/JanetPhD
Media scholar & author of book: Misbehavior in Cyber Places
http://misbehaviorincyberplaces.tumblr.com


On 04/27/2019 02:19 AM, Charles M. Ess wrote:
> Thanks for this, Jonathan - first of all, for the occasion to go back 
> to JD Peters' account of the Phaedrus.  It is more than worth the 
> (re)read on any number of, in my view, most insightful and richly 
> helpful points and matters.
> In this context, the main point is that while Peters alludes to the 
> place and influence of the Phaedrus on many accounts of / writers on 
> communication - he himself (scrupulously) avoids any connection / 
> claim / characterization of the critique of writing as a moral / media 
> panic: FWIW, neither of these terms appear in the book.
>
> Secondly, many thanks for the paper - delicious reading, as a 
> colleague once said.
>
> Lastly and FWIW, your account of the rise of the trope of Phaedrus as 
> media panic makes good sense to me.  I'm still curious as to more 
> specific sources and inspirations - but again, not as a critique 
> thereof so much as interest in how different writers / scholars 
> develop the argument.  I've a few promising articles to review that I 
> hope may shed some light.
>
> Again, a thousand thanks for the excellent tips and elucidation.
>
> best,
> - charles
>
>
>
> On 26/04/2019 23:26, Jonathan Sterne, Dr. wrote:
>> The best statement of the media theory reading the Phaedrus is 
>> probably chapter 1 of John Durham Peters’ Speaking into the Air.
>>
>> I think the persistence of McLuhan and Ong’s explanations of orality 
>> (autocorrected to “morality” so draw your own conclusions) and 
>> literacy can be chalked up to some of the following:
>>
>> —they are compellingly written and easy to understand explanations of 
>> complex phenomena.
>>
>> — media history has a modern bias which means most people in the 
>> field wouldn’t know where to to to fact check.  In other words, 
>> McLuhan and Ong are often the only texts people in media studies know 
>> on the subject.  Maybe Havelock or Innis, maybe Eisenstein.  But 
>> there’s a huge body of scholarship in the history of the book that 
>> reads very differently.
>>
>> —there is also almost complete ignorance of the findings of modern 
>> archaeology in media studies (even among most of the media 
>> archaeologists) , which would transform our understandings of the 
>> emergence of human communication.  For an example from another field, 
>> see Gary Tomlinson, A Million Years of Music.
>>
>> — it is easy for (white?) readers to somehow read past McLuhan’s 
>> racism and Ong’s theology (in part because Orality and Literacy is 
>> scrubbed of the mysticism in Presence of the Word).
>>
>> And a self-citation for good measure: 
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sterneworks.org_TheologyofSound.pdf&d=DwIGaQ&c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&r=ZbDX0BOt9yymY9kiKJygQlYWJTZy8pNc-wAya2znZ7A&m=30FlSiZEtAotv6V-TQ1alqSF6OT8BV1nqFsoOAfAvGo&s=xiTEI44F5qo3ifn37fzml9_5yHivDyGzxbv77IM-nv4&e=
>>
>> —Jonathan
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