Plato predicted Facebook fools 2,000 years ago

Technology promises to do those things easier, which, by their very nature, are more difficult.

A wise king named Thamus lived in ancient Egypt. One day he was visited by a sharp god named Theuth.

Theuth was the inventor of many useful things: geometry arithmetics; astronomy; and dice playing. But his greatest invention, as he imagined, “was the use of letters.” And that's exactly what he wanted to share with King Thamus.

The art of writing, Theut said, “will make Egyptians wiser and strengthen their memory; it is specifically good for memory and wisdom. ”

But Thamus failed him. “O Genial Theuth,” said, “baba or inventor of an art is not always the best user or non-user of his inventions in other users. ”

The king continued: “For your discovery there will be forgetfulness in the souls of the students, for they will not use memory; they will believe outside things, letters and will not remember themselves. ”

The words written, Thamus concluded, “will give your disciples no truth, but only the colliding of the truth; they will be listeners of many things but will not learn anything; they will appear to know it all and in general they will not know anything; they will be boring societies, showing no reality. ”

Welcome to Facebook.

The story I'm quoting here is from “Fedri” Plato's; the words attributed to Socrates are two thousand and four hundred years old. They adapt to the extensive research done by The Times within the cynical Facebook calculations that tried shamelessly to cover serial disasters in its PR [public relations]: Russian dezinformians, Cambridge Analtica and cracks in the security given to users.

Now we learned that this company was trying to cover up the facts that deal with the Russian mixup on the platform, trying quietly to attack its rivals and critics like George Soros. Facebook denies some of the claims filed by The Times, but it is correct to say that the company's reputation lies somewhere between Philip Morris and Purdue Pharmas in the toxic environment of public relations.

Which someone might say: In time.

Confession of wildly exaggerated promises and unintentional damage to technology is not new. The thing is, he didn't stop surprised us. Why?

Part of the reason is that we tend to forget that technology is as good as people who use it. We want it to freeze us; and we tend to degrade. In a better world, Twitter could be a digital debt of ideas and dialogue by improving the public sphere. We made it like a garbage dump of the American mind. Facebook was supposed to serve as a platform to increase human interaction, not a device for the lonely who fall deeper into their isolation.

It's also true that Facebook and other giant Silicon Valley have sold themselves not as much as a company in pursuit of profit as idealistic movements. The Facebook mission is “to make the world more open and connected.” Tesla's goal is to accelerate the world's transition to stable energy.” Google's slogan was “don't be shit,” at least until they pulled it out this year.

But the profound reason why technology so often disappoints and betrays us is that it promises to make easy what, by their nature, must be embarrassing.

Making tweet and troll is easy. Mastering the arts of conversation and measuring the debate is hard. Writing a text is easy. Writing a proper letter is hard. Looking at things on Google is easy. Knowing what to look for is hard. Having a thousand friends on Facebook is easy. Reaching six or many friends over a large period of time is hard. Shooting in Tinder is easy. Finding love and keeping it is hard.

That's what Socrates [or Thamus] means when you reject the written word: I'm a street outside. It creates illusions that we can remain informed, and connected, even when we are spared the burden of consideration, presence of mind, and memory. This may seem strange today. But how much of our personal, professional or national problems can be solved if we give up dependence on the shortcuts [shortcutts]?

Reading what The Times wrote about how Facebook dealt with its problems is getting caught up in the way that Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg desperately seek to put a fund with consultants, lobbyists and what they don't. As with love and grammar, maintaining faith is hard.

Start again Facebook. From elementary school. Do not assume that you will transform the world's situation. Work harder to operate with ethics, more open, and more responsible ones. Admit it takes time. You had Facebook for a weekend. Read an ancient book better.

D'oh!