Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Some of the Greeks recognized that they were passing through a change in how people frame the world, in their case the change from the oral to the written. It’s fascinating that people should have this awareness of a sea change in their way of knowing, this self-consciousness about it. We today may also be in such a moment, and the more you know what earlier pivotal moments felt like, maybe the better you can get your mind around what is going on now.
Why, when the topic is the future of the media, are we starting with the Ancient Greeks?
The Greeks matter because some of them, at least, recognized that they were passing through a change in how people frame the world. In their case, it was the change from the oral to the written, and this is of course the subject of one of the Platonic dialogues, Phaedrus. In it, Socrates declares himself fully aware that human capacities can change, and that as memory is displaced or funnelled into print, a variety of changes may set in which affect not only how we know things, but also who we are as human beings. Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato shows that the Greeks were aware that there was some connection, perhaps even an all-embracing connection, among forms of communication, memory and thought. It’s quite fascinating to me that people should have this awareness of a sea change in their way of knowing, this self-consciousness about it.
We today may also very well be in a moment when we are dimly aware that our way of touching the world, or having the world touch us, is amid a transformation. I won’t say it’s in the process of dissolving or re-forming, we’re not even sure what the right verb is at this point, but something big is going on in the way people encounter the world, and the way the world encounters them.
My point is that the more you know what earlier pivotal moments felt like, maybe the better you can get your mind around what is and isn’t going on now.
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Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology, as well as chair of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University. He is the author of 12 books, several of which concern media and culture, and a prominent commentator on the US media. He writes regularly for Dissent, The American Prospect, TPMcafe.com, and opendemocracy.net. He suggests that no successful model for newspapers to make money from the internet exists, and that there is no future for the industry without government support.
