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Author Says The iPhone is a Gutenberg Moment, but with Ample Perils
Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 3:00 PM - by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
The iPhone gives people the ability to access the vast knowledge of the Internet almost anywhere they go, and that makes the iPhone one of the most important inventions ever, according to Kevin Myers at the Belfast Telegraph on Friday. In fact, it could be another Gutenberg moment in time. Even so, we don’t want to forget how to remember.
The iPhone makes Internet access easy. "At which point, we turn a corner in civilisation. If anyone anywhere can access the internet wherever they are on the planet, then the world is set to change in wholly irrevocable and unforeseeable ways. In other words, the iPhone is probably going to have a greater impact on civilisation than even television," Mr. Myers suggested.
Even more important, the iPhone marks a change in the currents of history. "This is our Gutenberg moment," he wrote. "...the watershed which divides one epoch from another, so much so that the inhabitant of the latter epoch cannot begin to understand what life was like in the earlier one."
Not only are there implications for learning and communication, but also for governments, dynasties. "I merely ask, how on earth can they survive if commuters on buses and trains, people in jungle clearings and round-the-world sailors, can connect with the internet using a device the size of half a biscuit?" Mr. Myers wondered.
However, there are also ominous implications for the human species. The iPhone could change the way we acquire knowledge and change the way we decide what to remember. We could go from a species of individuals with hard earned reasoning and knowledge to simply "drone-terminals for the Internet" the author posited.
The author finished with a sober warning: "Nonetheless, there is surely an argument now for ensuring that children remember many, apparently ’irrelevant’ things; for memory does not just connect us to the past, but as a communal act, it connects us to one another today.
"Otherwise, the iPhone, and all that will follow from it, could turn us all into disconnected molecules, swirling around in the solar blizzard of cyberspace."
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