In the dialogue, The Phaedrus, Plato describes his ideas and vision of human communication, its advantages, and disadvantages. The Phaedrus compares oral and written communication and outlines the advantages of the two forms. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Internet becomes the main and the most popular form of communication. Thus, it has many limitations and disadvantages caused by the non-personal nature of communication and written messages.
In The Phaedrus Plato states that written communication (writing) cannot be considered original, because it, in fact, is repetitive or imitative, and cannot be finally authoritative. In contrast, rhetoric allows a person to communicate more effectively and predict a possible future that has already not been fulfilled at the moment of its prediction. Because writing has the potential of foreclosing thought, it is dangerous. Socrates states: “writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence” (Plato 67). The message sent through the Internet is also nameless and impersonal. Similar to paintings, if a user asks questions written words preserve silence.
Plato underlines that an individual must always question the text and never accepts what it says at face value. Moreover, in an indirect way, Phaedrus defends writing as an activity, because of all the attacks on writing made by Ammon, who is a god and thus has no need for writing, and Socrates, who placed himself above writing, show that humans do need writing. Even if the Internet user questions the text, he/she will never receive the answer or response. Plato effectively excludes writing from the highest forms of thinking, understanding, and communicating. Socrates explains: “I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent” (Plato 68).
In contrast to written communication, rhetoric (speech-making) is a better form of communication because a speaker can receive feedback and see the reaction of the audience. Once one does the argument and the analyses it generates are undeniably intriguing. Writing means inscribing speech, thus, making visual a preexisting system of oral communication. In this view, thinking comes first, followed by communication.
Writing appears as a species of communication, a species that operates only in the absence of what it represents. Thus, from the moment it appears, writing exists quite some distance from what it Indeed, the continuity of speaking communities depends on constant extraction from speaker to speaker and constant repetition and change of what any given speaker says. Moreover, conversation grafts itself onto other conversations and in turn, has new conversation grafted onto it.
Written communication and words can be extremely frustrating in that computers in general and Internet access, in particular, are often unreliable and changing constantly. A strong sense of project ownership, the support that emanates from team cohesion, and the willingness of the user to step forward to seek solutions to problems in the face of insurmountable and never-ending technical obstacles. In oral communication, that is, in dictation, the author generates language but need not be concerned at the time with such low-level requirements of writing as spelling. Although speech has its own requirements: speech articulation is highly learned and automatized.
Considering that the writer has already written one thing and then changed it to another, it seems that this very precise fitting of expression to intention goes on into the very latest stage of written language production. Consequently, if this stage is being occupied with concerns about spelling, capitalization, or even penmanship, there will be little opportunity for this fine fitting to occur. Socrates says: “The worst of authors will say something which is to the point.
Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in” (Plato 14). Using the Internet, the focus is on technological acceleration, on human-machine interface. Dialogue is impossible to render into neat categories. The real reason for this is that the individual human being is too complex to be depicted in simplified terms. Written communication does not really permit the user to step outside the restraints of monologue. In the standard reading, the monologue dominates.
Speech should be seen as a unique form of communication in which such variables as range, potential audience, and possible content are greatly changed and the effects of all these and other characteristics of communication are accentuated. Second, although the potential for the Internet and the Web to influence civic discourse has sometimes been conceived in international, cross-cultural terms, expertise about how to effectively design messages and pages/sites remains inadequate to the demands of intercultural representation. In contrast, written communication simplifies messages.
The Internet is a bad thing because all generalizations about language are simplifications, in that, to achieve an abstract description of language one must, first, see it as something communicated by people in general (not specific people), also, a user should look at it as being separate from the social life in which it takes place. Rhetoric declares ways of expression as correct or not. Socrates says: “Yes; and the two speeches happen to afford a very good example of the way in which the speaker who knows the truth may, without any serious purpose, steal away the hearts of his hearers” (Plato). Utterance partakes of the complexity of social life, in all its rich detail, resisting generalization. Specificity about the details of social life thus leads to complexity in the ways in which utterance can manifest itself.
A negative feature of written messages on the Internet is the possibility to access the information without the author’s permission. Once a point of view has been challenged, a wedge is driven into the supposedly seamless architecture of the nomological underpinning that supports it. The resulting images of the “real people” about whom the message is created are actualized in various ways, seemingly consistent with the needs of the people who post to discussions. “Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err” (Plato 56).
In sum, arguments discussed in The Phaedrus allow saying that the Internet is a bad thing because it does not allow the user to communicate effectively and receive a response from the audience. The Internet limits users’ communication: it does not allow the sender to receive feedback and identify an author and audience. In contrast, rhetoric (oral communication) is the best way to change ideas and facts through a dialogue approach.
Works Cited
Plato, The Phaedrus. Trans. Alexander Nehemas & Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995.