Technology And Literacy In Plato's 'The Cave'

Close your eyes, Now imagine the world without all the technology we have today. Hard to imagine right? Anyone born in the Twenty-first century has grown to know modern technology. From the printing press to the iPhone 7, We have all used and grown accustomed to the benefits of modern technology. We have become enslaved to technology due to the fact that we have become blind to the dangers of technology, our literacy skills have decreased, as well as we are too dependent on technology. In Plato's “The Cave” shows us a group of prisoners chained to face a wall. A fire behind them casts shadows on the wall their facing of a variety of different things however they cannot see what they truly are. The prisoners only reality is the shadows

Whether it be a textbook or a text message, we are always reading something. However, as technology advanced our literacy skills have decreased. We have begun to lose the ability to read longer pieces of text. Nicholas Carr stated in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” that “The more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.” Technology has made us lazy. Instead of focusing on details we prefer to skim it and summarize it. In any piece of writing the details included are what makes the article make sense in the first place. As humans, we have the ability to adapt to our environment. We have seen that our current society prefers short summaries, so as a result, we have reduced the amount we write. Instead of detailed four-page papers we have settled for a one paragraph summary. Who's to blame? Technology is. Social media has become a key part of our current society. Most Millennials you ask will have at least one form of social media. Twitter is one of the popular social media platforms, it allows for people to express themselves. However, the limit that twitter has placed is a 160 character post. This a prime example of how modern technology influences the decline in the amount we write. Instead of truly expressing how we feel, we abide by technology's rules and reduce our feelings to a couple of basic sentences. As technology continues to advance it will continue to reduce the amount we write until it's just a couple simple