WWSS?

Kay Lindell
Blog on WWSS


“What would Socrates say?” is an essay written by Peter Cookson Jr. in 2009. It is a very informative piece with the interesting twist of trying to understand what Socrates would have to think about of growth of technology in today’s world. Cookson says that his greatest fear is similar to that of the infamous philosopher “My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance.” With Google and other means of quick resource information we are teetering on the edge of thinking that because we have all this information at our fingertips it’s the same as knowing it. To actually claim the knowledge of something though, we have to be able to really understand it, to the point of being able to teach it to someone else. With the vastly large information super highway easily accessible though we tend to filter information in and out of our brains without retaining much. Why should we? We can always look it up again quickly. Cookson recognizes this need for information came from two key points in our history: the European enlightenment, and the industrial revolution, without these advances we would never have come to the point we are at today. We are standing with our feet on either side of this line of new and old. We mustn’t forget what got us here. The decline of hard tangible newspaper sales is an ominous omen to something that we might not be able to reverse if we go too far.