A Race to Mass Intelligence or Mass Dumbing Down: Either Way, Disruption Will Win

As social media and now AI dramatically alter how we consume and create information and relate to each other, worries are mounting.

What’s notable is that we’ve been here before. Despite similar handwringing and worries, the disruptive innovations in media have ultimately ruled the day—even after accounting for technology’s uneven progress as the latest Nobel Prize winner in economics Joel Mokyr has argued—and we adapted.

Were there losses? Sure. Were some of the losses overstated? Yup. Were there also gains? Undoubtedly.

Although many are currently thinking through if and how to control the impacts from these new media (worthwhile questions), another set of questions revolve around how we might look back upon them with the benefit of hindsight.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Plato (ironically or not) recorded concerns about the dramatic spread of the written word, which could undermine memory and true understanding. In words widely attributed to Socrates, Plato wrote:

“This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember themselves.”

Those who read the written word wouldn’t know the “truth,” but only a semblance of it. They would “appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.”

There’s something to that argument.

Few if any among us can recite Homeric-length epic poems today. Even fewer individuals learned most knowledge through rich dialogues with other people that forced them to wrestle with big questions and the limits of their knowledge. What’s more, the written word wasn’t nearly as good as the best of the emotive, expressive, and captivating storytellers in front of you.

But for those that didn’t have access to those experts, it provided something that was better than the alternative, nothing at all. It was also far more convenient—and offered other benefits. The disruptive innovation of writing allowed for greater access to information and its recall and use across society—classic hallmarks of disruptive innovation—which Plato recognized as well. There was a tradeoff, in other words.

The disruptive innovation ultimately carried the day—and few of us can imagine going back.

Fast forward to the disruptive innovation of the printing press, which led to the mass production of texts not nearly as beautiful, hand-crafted—or as controlled!—as those created by monks in the Church, for example.