I found an interesting quote today:
You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.
It could easily be about Wikipedia, Google, or the Internet in general.
Actually, it’s about a much older technology: writing. Specifically, it’s (Plato’s account of) Socrates’ (account of Thamus’) commentary on writing from Phaedrus. Full text here, via an interesting NY Times article on an AI Jeopardist.
What do you think? Was writing worth it? How about the Internet?
(Postscript: relevant comic from Chuck & Beans)
Adam Scherlis 