ABSTRACT
It is not an exaggeration to say that technology is the central fact of 20th century literacy. Of course, it is also true that technology has always been the central, defining fact of literacy. It is technology that makes writing possible, as much for the ancient Greek with his stylus or the medieval scribe with his quill and ink as for the contemporary author with her new Powerbook computer. Literacy acts—acts of reading and writing—cannot exist prior to technology but are always and inescapably technological. To say that technology and literacy cannot be separated is not to say, of course, that we yet understand the relationship between them. After all, the questions that Socrates raises in the Phaedrus (Plato, 1973) about how the technology of writing will shape the human mind are questions that, after twenty-four centuries, are still open to debate. Indeed, it is the technology of writing itself that allows Derrida and Plato to continue their discussion about the nature of writing—across time, space, and culture. And we listen in on this discussion through the technology of printing, which puts fixed, more-or-less agreed upon authoritative versions of Plato and of Derrida in our hands.
