The Myth of Theuth: Plato’s Phaedrus and Technology
Can technology make us smarter? The question seems simple, but it’s fascinating to think that Plato, even thousands of years ago in the earlier stages of technology, didn’t say yes. He also didn’t say no, which seems to show the complexity of this issue, a critical one that we’re still confronting today.
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates claims he heard an old story about the Egyptian king Thamus, ruler of the city of Naucratis. As it goes, Theuth, the godly inventor of arithmetic and various arts, presented a system of writing to the king. Note that, at this time, writing has yet to be discovered.
Theuth claimed that this system of writing would make the Egyptians “wiser and give them better memories.” As we think about the development of AI, in many ways, it’s all too similar to Theuth’s system of writing. In both cases, there appears to be a sharp distinction between authentic ability and augmented ability. And it is this augmented ability which technology tends to enhance, yet this enhancement comes at the cost of what is frequently described as “cognitive offloading.” As technological assistance increases for any given task, it seems that less and less human input is needed. Thamus’ reply seems to underscore this idea:
“O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.”
Thamus faced a system of letters as the technology of his time (which seems almost funny to consider now, given how fundamental it is to our society). Today, we might think of the many discussions surrounding AI’s proper role in education, as teachers are faced with very much the same dilemma which Thamus deliberated.
Plato doesn’t leave us empty-handed in this dialogue, however. He leaves us with a piece of advice, and that is the importance of conversation with one another. He writes,
“True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.
When technology makes us question what it means to be human, perhaps the answer may be found, as Plato says, through conversation with one another. It could very well be “the utmost extent of human happiness.”
