Robin Williams on Twitter: “What if Shakespeare had Twitter: ‘To be or … that’s it.’”
As someone who works on the Internet and is — usually — excited about new technologies, I sometimes get a little frustrated by the naysayers and anti-tech scaremongers who love to tell people how much better things were when they were young.
The Internet as a whole (and I do realize that “Internet” itself is a such a large and vague term as to be almost meaningless nowadays) has been blamed from everything from the downfall of society to the downfall of language, as well as all manner of sexual, mental and physical perversions. It speaks to the impact of the Internet that at one time or another it has represented the downfall of every significant development of human culture since the Stone Age. (I mean, EVERYBODY knows that fire was much better when you had to rub two stones together, it made the fire more “personal”)
Well, it’s nice to see that there are people out there who can put the whole thing in context and are working to help us all take the leap to the next rung in the evolution ladder together. In this case, Dennis Banner, a professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (where the Supercomputing Applications Center is housed!), has written the book “A Better Pencil” to ostensibly demonstrate that every change in the way we communicate has always had its detractors, and that nevertheless had a positive impact upon humanity as a whole.
What I’m dealing with is the way technology affects readers and writers when they communicate. And also how readers and writers help direct the way technology develops. So, what I’m trying to do is put the computer revolution into historical context to see how it fits with previous innovations in communication like pencils, like the printing press, like the clay tablet, like writing itself. A new communication technology does what old technology was able to do – sometimes better, sometimes in a little different way — and I’m looking at how we make sense of all of this.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/09/19/better_pencil/print.html
As Baron points out, even the most basic changes, revolutions that we now consider seminal in the development of human culture and society, had its very high profile critics.
I start with Plato’s critique of writing where he says that if we depend on writing, we will lose the ability to remember things. Our memory will become weak. And he also criticizes writing because the written text is not interactive in the way spoken communication is. He also says that written words are essentially shadows of the things they represent. They’re not the thing itself. Of course we remember all this because Plato wrote it down — the ultimate irony.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2009/09/19/better_pencil/print.html
I recommend Salon’s interview with Baron for all those of you who, like me, sometimes need a little fuel to light the fire of your responses to criticism of the Internet. Twitter isn’t the end of the world, or even of the English language
Incidentally, if Shakespeare did have Twitter, he’d have enough characters for this:
Since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.
