Michael Regilio

Back then, critics argued that putting knowledge on paper itself would weaken the mind.

You can find that complaint in texts from the 15th and 16th century.

Oh, yeah.

We're absolutely going to get into that in about half a second.

But I'll just point out that complaining about printed text is the 15th century version of complaining about the Internet on the Internet.

Yeah.

And you got it exactly right.

And that person you're thinking of was none other than Socrates.

Centuries earlier, he made the same complaint about writing itself.

He warned that it would create the appearance of wisdom without the reality.

Socrates never wrote down a single word.

If it wasn't for that pesky Plato writing down everything he said, Socrates would never have made it into Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

And then no one from my generation would have ever have heard of him.

Come on, it's too quick.

It takes the personal touch out of bludgeoning someone to death.

Yeah.

And look, in my research, I even found people writing about how dangerous the bicycle was going to be.

So we are just scared of new stuff.

I mean, I wonder what people must have thought of the newfangled elevator.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's true.