Memory, Technology, and Wisdom
The argument
People keep announcing the end of reading. The essay asks whether that is a collapse of literacy or the arrival of a different cultural form. It begins with Plato's account of writing as remedy and danger, then follows how technologies of memory change the ways people keep and interpret experience. Walter Ong's "secondary orality" frames the argument that digital culture recombines oral and visual forms and gives repetition, circulation, remix, and shared recognition a larger role. The losses are real: attention fragments, algorithms curate what is seen, and language grows more uniform. Digital media also support new creativity and new collective memory. Generative AI sharpens an old question. With information stored in abundance, what deserves attention, and how does information become knowledge or wisdom?
Publication details
- Author
- Katherine Elkins
- Publication
- Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 43, no. 2 (2022), pp. 297–321.
- DOI
- 10.5840/gfpj202243217
Memory, Technology, and Wisdom at the publisher →
Key concepts
Plato; Phaedrus; writing; memory technologies; secondary orality; digital media; reading; collective memory; generative AI; knowledge; wisdom.
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