The New Technologies of the Word and technological linguistic advancement

I find interesting the parallels made from electronic writing to early conventional writing, and back to Socrates, where memory had a higher importance and Socrates warned against writing, as he feared that it would bring in a sort of intellectual decline, that people would rely more on writing and not their memory. He thought people would quit using their memory and become forgetful, and that written knowledge would become burdensome because people would have it without "proper instruction".

I see Socrates' thoughts on this as an appeal to authority. This written knowledge hasn't become burdensome at all, to the contrary it has allowed a very efficient and rapid transmission of knowledge. Humanity has through this also made a lot of technological advancements overall, more than what Socrates could have imagined, and also against a predicted decline.

But transitioning through the various communication mediums, this all demonstrates an amazing advancing evolution of our communication. Who knows what this will be many years from now. According to geneticists, human evolution is occurring now at a rapid rate (undergoing mutations at 100 times faster than previously), that may play a role in this process.

Electronic communication is by far the most high-tech form of communication brought so far by technological advancements. World-wide, English has taken a large impact on other languages, e.g. sometimes Germans communicating electronically may drop short English sentences and not only words. More common in written than spoken language. But we don't know how far this will cause changes. In France for example, there is a strong attempt to preserve the French language. A lot of effort to avoid, translate or co-translate English words into the French.

In regards to ageism, I can understand some of this phenomena pretty good. My mother may ask for help with the computer, which I can understand because she did not grow up in an era internet and computers and is less accustomed to it. So there is pressure on the older generations to learn and get accustomed to this newer stuff. Any one of us can and most likley will find themselves dealing with these kind of adjustments.