Every society fears a new technology, and when it eventually embraces
it, it does it by declaring the death of the previous technology
(which never dies completely) and adapts the vocabulary of the
previous technology for its own uses. And yet, both in Socrates' case,
and in the case of the electronic technology, our active memory is
threatened if we allow an instrument to do the memorizing for us.
There is a distinction that is important between memorizing, as a book
or a computer can do, and remembering, which we alone can do through
the unfathomably complex system of thinking.