of Thamus The Judgment

I'
ll

I ou will find in Plato's Phaedrus a story about Thamus,the king of a great city of Upper Egypt. For people such as ourselves,who are inclined (in Thoreau's phrase) to be tools of our tools, few legendsaremore instructive tells it to his friend Phaedrus, his. The story, as Socrates than unfolds in the following way: Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number, calculation,geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they should be made widely known and available to Egyptians. Socratescontinues: Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as approval or disapTheuth went through them expressed proval, according as he judged Theuth's claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth's inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, "Here is an accomplishment,my lord the King,

lf"

TechnoPoly

of Thamus The Judgment

which will improveboth the wisdom and the memoryof for memory a surereceipt I havediscovered theEgyptians. "Theuth, my Parareplied, andwisdom."To this,Thamus of an art is not the best the discoverer gon of inventors, to thosewho judgeof the good or harmwhich will accrue practiceit. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondnessfor your off-spring atThose of its realfunction. tributedto it quitethe opposite their memory and to exercise who acquireit will cease forgetful;they will rely on writing to bring things become of by their by extemalsignsinstead to their remembrance is a What you have discovered own intemal resources. wisas for And memory' not for receiptfor recollection, the reputationfor it without have will your pupils dom, the reality: they will receivea quantity of information be thought andin consequence without properinstruction, when they arefor the mostpart quite very knowledgeable they are filled with the conceitof ignorant.And because of realwisdomthey will be a burdento wisdominstead society."' in Thamus'reI begin my book with this legendbecause there are severalsoundprinciplesfrom which we may sponse abouta beginto learnhow to think with wise circumspection society.In fact, there is even one error in the technological judgmentof Thamus, from which we may alsoleam something The error is not in his claim that writing will of importance. damagememory and createfalsewisdom' It is demonstrable that writing has had such an effect.Thamus'error is in his but believingthat writing will be a burdento societyandnothing writing's what to imagine fails he For all his wisdom, a burden. be, which,as we know, havebeenconsiderable' might benefits that any to suppose We may leamfrom this that it is a mistake effect'Every technolinnovationhasa one-sided technological

not either-or,but this-andogy is both a burden and a blessing; that. Nothing could be more obvious, of course, especially to thosewho have given more than two minutesof thought to the matter. Nonetheless,we are currently surroundedby throngs of zealousTheuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo.We might call such people Technophiles.They gaze on technology as a lover does on his beloved, seeing it as without blemish and entertaining no apprehensionfor the future. They are therefore dangerous and are to be approached cautiously.On the other hand,someone-eyedprophets,suchas are inclined to speakonly of burdens(in I (or so I am accused), the manner of Thamus) and are silent about the opportunities that new technologiesmake possible.The Technophilesmust and do so all over the place.My defense speakfor themselves, is that a dissentingvoice is sometimesneededto moderatethe multitudes. If one is to err, it is din made by the enthusiastic But it is an better to err on the side of Thamusianskepticism. of exception that, with the might note And I error nonetheless. his ludgment on writing, Thamus does not repeat this error. You might notice on rereading the legend that he gives arguments for and againsteach of Theuth's inventions. For it is that every culture must negotiatewith technology, inescapable whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away. The wise know this well, and are rarely impressed by dramatic and never overjoyed.Here, for example, changes, technglogical is Freud on the matter, from his doleful Ciuilization and lts Discontents: One would like to ask is there, then, no positive gain in pleasure,no unequivocal increasein my feeling of happihear the voice of a child ness,if I can,as often as I please,

TechnoPoly

ol Thamus The Judgment

of mine who is living hundreds of miles away or if I can leam in the shortest possibletime after a friend has reached his destination that he has come through the long and difficult voyage unharmed? Does it mean nothing that medicine has succeeded in enormously reducing infant mortality and the danger of infection for women in childbirth, and, indeed, in considerablylengthening the average life of a civilized man? Freud knew full well that technical and scientific advancesare not to be taken lightly, which is why he begins this passageby acknowledging them. But he ends it by reminding us of what they have undone: my child If there had been no railway to conquer distances, would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice; if travelling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the use of reducing infantile mortality when it is precisely that reduction which imposesthe greatestrestraint on us in the begetting of children, so that, taken all round, we nevertheless rear no more children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have created difficult conditions for our sexual life in marriage. . . . And, finally, what good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?" In tabulating the cost of technologi."l progr"ss, Freud takes a rather depressing line, that of a man who agrees with Thoreau'sremark that our inventions are but improved meansto an unimproved end. The Technophile would surely answer Freud

by saying that life has always been barren of joys and full of misery but that the telephone,ocean liners, and especiallythe reign of hygiene have not only lengthenedlife but made it a more agreeableproposition. That is certainly an argument I but would make(thusproving I am no one-eyedTechnophobe), have brought it. I to point at this it is not necessary Pursue Freud into the conversation only to show that a wise maneven one of such a woeful countenance-must begin his criHad King tique of technology by acknowledgingits successes. Thamus been as wise as reputed,he would not have forgotten to include in his judgment a prophecy about the powers that writing would enlarge. There is a calculus of technological change that requiresa measureof even-handedness. So much for Thamus' error of omission. There is another omissionworthy of note, but it is no error. Thamussimply takes for granted-and therefore does not feel it necessaryto saythat writing is not a neutral technology whose good or harm dependson the usesmade of it. He knows that the usesmade by the structureof the of any technology arelargely determined technology itself-that is, that its functions follow from its form. This is why Thamus is concerned not with what people will write; he is concemedthat peoplewill write' It is absurdto imagine Thamus advising, in the manner of today's standardthat, if only writing would be used for the brand Technophiles, production of certain kinds of texts and not others (let us say, for dramatic literature but not for history or philosophy), its disruptionscould be minimized.He would regard such counsel 6s extreme naivet6.He would allow, I imagine, that a technology may be barred entry to a culture. But we may learn from Thamus the following: once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; it does what it is designedto do. Our task is to understandwhat that design is-that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture,we must do so with our eyes wide open.

Technopoly
All of this we may infer from Thamus' silence.But we may learn even more from what he does say than from what he doesn't. He points out, for example,that writing will change what is meant by the words "memory" sn6l"wisdom." He fears that memory will be confused with what he disdainfully calls "recollection,"andhe worries that wisdom willbecome indistinguishablefrom mere knowledge. This judgment we must take createnew to heart,for it is a certainty that radicaltechnologies definitions of old terms, and that this processtakesplace without our being fully consciousof it. Thus, it is insidious and dangerous,quite different from the processwhereby new techIn our own time, nologies introducenew terms to the language. we have consciously added to our language thousands of new words and phrases having to do with new technologies"VCR," "binary digit," "software," "front-wheel drive," "window of opportunity," "Walkman," etc. We are not taken by surpriseat this. New things requirenew words. But new things also modify old words, words that have deep-rootedmeanings. The telegraph and the penny press changed what we once meant by "information." Television changes what we once meant by the terms "political debate," "news," and "public opinion." The computer changes "information" once again. Writing changed what we once meant by "truth" and "law"; printing changed them again, and now television and the computer change them once more. Such changes occur quickly, hold no plebissurely, and, in a sense, silently. Lexicographers cites on the matter. No manualsare written to explain what is happening,and the schoolsare oblivious to it. The old words still look the same,are still used in the samekinds of sentences. But they do not have the same meanings; in some cases,they have opposite meanings.And this is what Thamus wishes to teach us-that technology imperiously commandeersour most important terminology. It redefines"freedom," "truth," "intelligence," "fact," "wisdom," "memory," "history"-^ll the words

Judgment of Thamus The

we live by. And it does not pause to tell us. And we do not pauseto ask. This fact about technologicalchangerequiressome elaboration, and I will return to the matter in a later chapter'Here, there are severalmore principlesto be mined from the judgment of they presageall I will Thamusthat require mentioning because that the pupils of Thamus warns write about. For instance, reputation for wisdom. He Theuth will develop an undeserved in the use of meansto say that thosewho cultivate competence are granted grouP that elite an become a new technology authority and prestigeby those who have no such undeserved competence.There are different ways of expressingthe interesting implicationsof this fact. Harold Innis, the father of modern communication studies, repeatedly spoke of the "knowledge He meant premonopolies"createdby important technologies. cisely what Thamus had ln mind: those who have control over the workings of a particular technology accumulatepower and inevitably form a kind of conspiracyagainstthosewho have no access to the specialized knowledge made available by the protechnology. In his book The Bias of Communication,lnnis vides many historical examples of how a new technology "busted up" a traditional knowledge monopoly and createda new one presidedover by a different grouP. Another way of saying this is that the benefitsand deficitsof a new technology are not distributed equally. There are, as it were, winners and losers.It is both puzzling and poignant that on many occasions the losers,out of ignorance, have actually cheeredthe winners, and some still do. Let us take as an examplethe caseof television.In the United States,where television has taken hold more deeply than anywhere else,many people find it a blessing,not least those who have achieved high-paying, gratifying careersin television as It should and entertainers. newscasters, technicians, executives, surprise no one that such people, forming as they do a new

Technopoly
knowledge monopoly, should cheer themselvesand defend and promote television technology. on the other hand and in the long run, television may bring a gradual end to the careersof schoolteachers, since school was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of ho* mu.h impor_ tance the printed word has. For four hundred ye"rr, school_ teachers have beenpart of the knowledgemonopoly created by printing, and they are now witnessing the bieakup of that monopoly. It appears as if they can do little to prwent that breakup, but surely there is something perverse about schoorteachers'beingenthusiastic about what is happening.Such en_ thusiasm always calls to my mind an image of some tum-of-the-century blacksmith who not onry sings the praises of the automobile but also berievesthat his business wiil be enhancedby it. we know now that his businesswas not enhanced by it; it was rendered obsolete by it, as perhaps the clearheaded blacksmiths knew. what courd they iave done? Weep, if nothing else. we have a similar situation in the deveropment and spread of computer technology, for here too there are winners and losers. There can be no disputing that the computer has increased the power of large-scale organizations like the armed forces, or airline companiesor banks or tax-coilecting agencies. And it is equally clear that the computer is now inJisplnr"bre to highIevel researchersin physics and other naturar sciences. nuito what extent has computer technology been an advantage to the massesof people? To steelworkers,vegetable_storelwners, teachers,garage mechanics,musicians,bricklayers, dentists, and most of the rest into whose lives the computer now intrudes? Their private matters have been mude more accessible to pow_ erful institutions. They are more easily tracked and controlred; are subjected to more examinations; are increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them; are often reduced to mere numerical objects. They are inundated by junk mail. They are

Tho Judgment of lhamus

11

easytargetsfor advertisingagencies and political organizations. The schools teach their children to operate computerizedsystems insteadof teaching things that are more valuableto children. In a word, almost nothing that they need happensto the losers.Which is why they are losers. It is to be expectedthat the winnerswill encourage the losers to be enthusiastic about computer technology.That is the way of winners, and so they sometimestell the losers that with personalcomputers the averageperson can balancea checkbook more neatly, keep better track of recipes,and make more logical shopping lists. They also tell them that their lives will be conducted more efficiently. But discreetly they neglect to say from whose point of view the efficiency is warranted or what might be its costs.Shouldthe losersgrow skeptical, the winners dazzle them with the wondrous feats of computers, almost all of which have only marginal relevance to the quality of the losers' lives but which are nonetheless impressive.Eventually, the losers succumb,in part becausethey believe, as Thamus prophesied,that the specialized knowledge of the mastersof a new technology is a form of wisdom. The masters come to believe this as well, as Thamus also prophesied.The result is that certain questionsdo not arise.For example,to whom will the technology give greater power and freedom? And whose power and freedom will be reduced by it? I have perhaps made all of this sound like a well-planned conspiracy,as if the winners know all too well what is being won and what lost. But this is not quite how it happens. For one thing, in culturesthat have a democraticethos, relatively weak traditions,and a high receptivity to new technologies, everyone is inclinedto be enthusiastic about technological change, believing that its benefits will eventually spread evenly among the entire population.Especially in the United States, where the lust for what is new has no bounds, do we find this childlike conviction most widely held. Indeed,in America,socialchangeof any

t2

Technopoly

ol Thamus The Judgment

13

kind is rarely seenas resultingin winnersand losers, a condition that stems in part from Americans' much-documented optimism. As for change brought on by technology, this native optimism is exploited by entrepreneurs, who work hard to infuse the population with a unity of improbable hope, for they know that it is economicallyunwise to reveal the price to be paid for technologicalchange. One might say, then, that, if there is a conspiracy of any kind, it is that of a culture conspiring against itself. In addition to this, and more important, it is not always clear, at least in the early stagesof a technology's intrusion into a culture,who will gain most by it and who will lose most. This is becausethe changeswrought by technology are subtle if not downright mysterious, one might even say wildly unpredictable. Among the most unpredictable are those that might be labeled ideological.This is the sort of change Thamus had in mind when he wamed that writers will come to rely on extemal signs insteadof their own intemal resources, and that they will receive quantities of information without proper instruction. He meant that new technologies change what we mean by "knowing" and "truth"; they alter those deeply embeddedhabits of thought which give to a culture its senseof what the world is like-a senseof what is the natural order of things, of what is reasonable, of what is inevitable,of what of what is necessary, is real. Since such changesare expressedin changed meanings of old words, I will hold off until later discussingthe massive ideological transformation now occurring in the United States. Here, I should like to give only one example of how technology createsnew conceptionsof what is real and, in the process, undermines I refer to the seeminglyharmless older conceptions. practice of assigning marks or grades to the answers students give on examinations. This procedureseemsso natural to most of us that we are hardly awareof its significance.We may even find it difficult to imagine that the number or letter is a tool or,

if you will, a technology; still less that, when we use such a behavior,we have done sometechnology to judge someone's thing peculiar. In point of fact, the first instance of grading students'papersoccurredat Cambridge University in tTgz at s No one knows the suggestionof a tutor namedWilliam Farish. much about William Farish;not more than a handful have ever heard of him. And yet his idea that a quantitativevalue should be assignedto human thoughts was a major step toward conconcept of reality. If a number can be structing a mathematical given to the quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence,even sanity itself. When Galileo said that the language he did not mean to include of nature is written in mathematics, or insight. But most of us are human feeling or accomplishment sociOur psychologists, now inclined to make theseinclusions. find it quite impossibleto do their work ologists,and educators numbers. They believethat without numbersthey canwithout not acquire or expressauthentic knowledge. I shall not argue here that this is a stupid or dangerousidea, only that it is peculiar.What is even more peculiar is that so many of us do not find the idea peculiar.To say that someone he has an IQ of t34, or should be doing better work because that someoneis a 7.2 on a sensitivity scale,or that this man's essayon the rise of capitalismis an A - and that man'sis a C * or would have soundedlike gibberishto Galileo or Shakespeare If it makes senseto us, that is becauseour Thomas Jefferson. minds have been conditioned by the technology of numbers so that we seethe world differently than they did. Our understanding of what is real is different. Which is another way of saying that embeddedin every tool is an ideologicalbias,a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one senseor skill or attitude more loudly than another. This is what Marshall Mcluhan meant by his famous apho-

Technopoly rism "The mediumis the message.,, This is what Marx meant when he said,"Technology discloses man,smode of dealing with nature" and creates "conditions the of intercourse,, by which we relateto eachother.It is what wittgensteinmeant when, in referring to our most fundamental iechnology, he saidthat language is not mererya vehicreof thought bii ulro the driver.And it is what Thamus wishedthe inventor Theuth to see.This is, in short, an ancientand persistent piece of wisdom,perhaps most simply expressed in the old adagethat, to a man with a hammer, everythinglooks like a nail. *ithout being too literal, we may extendthe truism:To a man with a pencil, everything looks like a list. To a man with a camera, everything looks like an image.To a man with a computer, everything looks like data. And to a man with a grude sheet,everythinglooks like a number. But suchprejudices arenot alwaysapparent at the start of a joumey, which is why no on" cansafely technology's conspire to be a winnerin technological change. Who would haveimag_ ined,for example, whoseinterests and what world_viewt,rlould be ultimately advancedby the invention of the mechanical clock? The clockhadits origin in the Benedictine monasteries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The impetusbehind the invention wasto providea moreor less precise regularity to the routines of the monasteries, which required, among other things,sevenperiodsof devotionduring the course of ih" duy. The bells of the monasterywere to be rung to signal the canonical hours;the mechanical clock was the iechnolJgythat couldprovideprecision to these rituars of devotion.andlndeed it did' But what the monksdid not foresee was that the clock is a means not merelyof keepingtrackof the hoursbut alsoof synchronizing and controllingthe actions of men.And thus,by the middle of the fourteenth century, the clock had moved outside the walls of the monastery,and brought a new and precise regularityto the life of the workmanand the merchant.

The Judgment of Thamus

t5

"The mechanical clock,,,asLewis Mumford wrote, ,,made possi_ ble the idea of regular production, regular working hours and a standardized product.', In short, without the clolh capitalism wo-uldhave been quite impossible. + The paradox, the zuryrise, and the wonder are that the clock was invented by men who wanted to devote themselves more rigorously to God; it ended as the technology of greatestuse to men who wished to devote themselves to the accumulation of money. In the etemal strug_ gle between God and Mammon, the clock quite unpredictabiy favored the latter. Unforeseen consequences stand in the way of all those who think they see clearly the direction in which u nu* technology "U" will take us. Not even those who invent a technology .un assumed to be reliableprophets,as Thamuswamed. Gutenberg, for example,was by all accountsa devout Catholic *ho *ouihave beenhorrified to hear that accursed hereticLuther describe printing as "God's highestact of grace,whereby the business of the Gospelis driven forward."Luther understood, as Gutenberg did not, that the mass-produced book, by placing the Word oi God on every kitchen tabre, makes chrirtian his own "u.h theologian-one might even say his own priest,or, better,from Luther'spoint of view, his own pope. tn ihe struggle between unity and diversity of religious beliel the press favored the latter,and we can assume that this possibility never occurredto Cutenberg. Thamus understood well the rimitations of inventors in grasping the social and psychological_that is, ideological_ blas of their own inventions. we can imagine him addlessing Gutenberg in the following way: ,,Gutenberg, my paragon of Inventors,the discovererof an art is not the best judge"of the good or harm which will accrueto those who practic" it. So it lc in this; you, who are the father of printing, have out of fondnessfor your off-spring come to believeit will advancethe eaune of the Holy Romansee,whereasin fact it will sow discord

technologies with old on"r--fo-.rtn..r]., compete ffi;;": r"l:y, butmostly fo. pruriig", for dominance of fheir*rr;t:_: isimpticii

jl;#1#iffi##['f:*lt':iffi rrr?
ru|j$:nt
on." ;;ilJ;ff :",1:knowtedgu .",n:n*;

or inrorma rioi wi th o u tt;; *i.*JH;:l 1,,ffi *iyo. il;d .r rear ffi ,T?,,J]
{ wisdom,,, thui ,""d_

lE lechnopofy amongbelievers;,it, will damage the authenticity loved Churchand destroy of your be_ i* ilonopoty.,, We canimagine that ft urnur-*oUa.ufro havepoinfedouf to Gutenberg, as he did t, Th;;il,';; new inventionwould clealea vastpopulation of readers *,'rln:

IheJudgment of lhamus

fl

thephotograph tacking*," ;it of painting atlt' televisior attacking the pinted word.when,nuar",ili"',^|"":'l::lt:"t waragainsr each otl,"r,.it;; ;r".", world_view, ," ."i,Ijle "
In the Unifed States, we can see

ini;'Jiil"1';'; ;::,::,""J,*1?:;,*'f :f, i;::F.::fr

*r, ,a".i *L#e,i,i.n,, Iry:Ti:t ifii:,,:';: ",,.

"r who can,t ties-*-children

'::1il:+1;; r;*H1 #;, :J,.7 fi:;;i#,'i,i"ff th" p,int"Jil: Asorro,r.i" ;;ff?#fi:j|";1'f "r
lear; ,-r""J aremany casual,r'"re won't, childrenwho

en tns' "[,]ll l[3iftiLTIT; :-' es """un Jffi:'trJl

other, there is the world .f *[",ri"r',

ri",q.#.ilffi ;Til{::T,,1?:: nil:ff :ffTJ::;f:,1,,:1 *,:*'-,;i,*'''[ii',.:Hfli',,T

use ofcompur_ once and ru' ; ;#;Ili liiitiffi;il :**t "rrln" "ruims omputer raiseegocentrism to the status a virtue?
of

technologies front each conorn", ,ntllTl:' aspect for the students, minds. o-'lrtltptomising "i.irrr "r

;::ff#;:i;:i:'in.rerigion'''";;"',:L;"'l';'J;.1"ff rion, and *h":" rwo great u,"n," o 1,,?i:::,1iffi,,il:T;:iTlr*ni;

n:n#:'*",Ji3: u"rt'lJ"o"ou', in,t*.tion and rear
ries,teachers, while emphasizing;;;;r" allowedorality its placein the classroom, and 1,"*.rl,"r"i.re achieved a kind of pedagogical peace between th"r" tro fol,n,,fleaming, so that what is valuablein each can be .*,.rr"0. Now comes computer,carryzing the alew the U*"", ,i private leaming individual and problemlsot;1i,

E1tri#r#J.:*t"*ffr,::x';.il*

year-old truce buoo-'

j:xTiJil:i I iI .l'i:*;;r.T5ixffi ,. ",,.n", -knowledge m;Jrn::":on

we shallbe breaking "'ft";;;;-

word-evenruffilff:ledge form of knowledg" uuf ,.t;.;;"."_,1."_".inenr ""alv.n"

to suppose that suthu fo-r-'of

consider:*l'ffi jllil; i:'::llJ*:.9.JI#:Ilfj..j acquired through the written

Intime, typeof student the who is *.r"rrf, may be considered a "'f"irre tYPre who is now *"""r'r *av be.regarded ;::::.il} asa *o respond' far too deta'chud,lacking in emotion,,nllll]11

wrons side_a rfi,Ffffi,ff"li;iljJ.ffi:i,il.}: will be like twenty-ri* y""rr'iro-'no.."zo, hftyz

because *'"u l*'""p'a' ,i"u';;"';;,il,", [m: ,?::"Tt

cannot organize their thought into logical structureeven in a simpre paragraph, chirdren #rr" .*"rt attendto rectures explanations or oral for more than a f"* _inut", at a time. They are

wil iii _,J"rpr""a

l8

Technopoly

television gavea new colorationto e,nery politicalcampaign, to everyhome,to every.school, to every.hur.h, to everyindus_ try. And that is why the competition amongmediais so fierce. surroundingevery technology ur" inrtitutionswhoseorganization-not to mention their reason for being_reflects the world-view promotedby the technology.Therefore, when an old technologyis assaulted by u n"i'one, institutionsare threatened' when institutions are threatened, a curturefinds itselfin crisis'This is serious business, which is why we learn nothing when educators ask,wit studentslearn mathematics better.bycomputers than by t""$o;kr;b, *h"n businessmen ask, Through which medium can we ,"ll .o." products? Or whenpreachers ash rhrough relevi_ ST:","".h;;r;;;opte sionthanthroughradio? pr whenpolitici'ans ask How effective aremessages sentthroughdifferentmedia? Suchquestion,t u*r"

theprinting press. Wehada different Iy-p" Eu.op". afi", television, the United Stut",*", nor arnerica plustelevision;

of human activity. If this metapno, pri, the matter too brutalry, we may try a gentler, kinder one: Technological .f,r^*" ,, neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecorogicar. i-"u.,;"-.'iLgical" in the same senseas the word is used by environmental scientists.One significant change generatestotal change.If you r"ToI" the caterpillars from u girr"n habitat, you are not left rvith the same environment mini, caterpillars:you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the sameis true if you add caterpillars to an environ_ ment that has had none. This is how the ecology .i;;;" works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something.It changeseverything.ln the year r5oo,fifty years after the. printing press was invented, we did not have old plus

toconrain rhe effecrs ofanew kh;ri#;Tli,ffii.ffi'::

These are the kinds of questions fhat technological change brings to mind when one grasps, as Thamus did, that technological competition ignites total war, whicl

The Judgment of Thamus

lg

an immediate, practical value to thosewho askthem,but they arediversionary. They direct our attentionaway from the seri_ ous social,intellectuar, and institutionarcrisesthat new media roster. Perhaps an analogyherewill help to underline the point. In speaking of the meaning of a poem,t. S.niot ,"_urk.jthut th. chiefuseof the overt conteniof poetry ,,to is satisfyone habit of the reader,to keep his mind di.r"ri"d and quiet, whil" th" poem doesits work upon him: much as the imagina; b-;;, is alwaysprovidedwith a bit of nice meatfor *,"" r,.rr"-i.'g.In other words, in askingtheir practical questions, educators, entrepreneurs, preachers, and politiciansu." lik" thu h*redog munchingpeacefullyon the meat while the houseis looteci. Perhaps some of thern know this and do not After all, a nicepieceof meat,offeredgraciously, "rp".iult;;;;. doestakecare of the problemof wherethe next mea'iwi, comefrom. But for the restof us,it cannotbe acceptable to havethe houseinvaded without protestor at leastut.ur"n.rr. What we needto consider about the computerhasnothing to do with its efficiency as a teachingtoor. we needto knoi in what ways it is alteringor, of leaming,undhof "on."plion in conjunctionwith television, it undermines the ord idea of school.Who careshow many boxesof cerealcan be sold via television? We needto know if television changes ,rr;;;: tion of reality,the relationship of the rich to thl poor,qhuidi" of happiness itself.A preacher who confines himselfto consider_ ing how a medium can increase his audiencewill miss the rignificant question: In what sense do new mediaarterwhat is meantby religion,by church, evenby God? And if thepolitician cannotthink beyond the next election, thenwe must wonder aboutwhat new mediado to the ideaof political o.g"nirution I rnd to the conceptionof citizenship. To help us do this, we have the ludgment of Thamus, who, In the way of legends, teaches us what larold Innis,in hi, *uV,

20

Technopoly

tried to. New technologies alter the structureof our interests: the things we think about. They alter the characterof our symbols: the thingswe think with. Andthey alter the natureof community:the arenain which thoughtsdevelop.As Thamus spoketo Innis across the centuries, it is essential that we listen to their conversation, join in it, revitalizeit. For something has happened in Americathat is strangeand dangerous, and there is only a dull and even stupid awareness of what it is-in part because it hasno name.I call it Technopoly

2
From Tools to Technocracy

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the famousaphorisms fl-ong pen of Karl Marx is his remarkin The from the troublesome that the "hand-loomgives you society of Philosophy Pouerty societywith the industrial with the feudallord; the steam-mill, As far asI know,Marx did not saywhichtechnology capitalist." and I am certainhis vision did not glves us the technocrat, the Nonetheless, of the Technopolist. Includethe emergence from their well that, apart remarkis useful.Marx understood createthe ways in which technologies implications, economic people perceivereality, and that such ways are the key to diverseforms of socialand mentallife.ln The understanding their life, so he says,"As individualsexpress ldeology, German asmuchlike MarshallMcluhan or, for they are,"which sounds toward Indeed, to sound. as it is possible Thamus that matter, that paragraph a remarkable theendof that booh Marx includes Media. Lfnderstanding in Mcluhan's would be entirelyat home he asks,"when powder and shot have "h Achillespossible," at all whenthe printing And is the Iliadpossible bpeninvented? exist?Is it not inevitable prern and even printing machines