Neil Postman在《Technopoly –– The Surrender of Culture to Technology》的开篇讲了一个故事：
You will find in Plato’s Phaedrus a story about Thamus, the king of a great city of Upper Egypt. For people such as ourselves, who are inclined (in Thoreau’s phrase) to be tools, few legends are more instructive than his. The story, as Socrates tells it to his friend Phaedrus, unfolds in the following way: Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they should be made widely known and available to Egyptians. Socrates continues:
Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he judged Theuth’s claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth’s inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared, “Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom.” To this, Thamus replied, “Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”
在1992初版的这本书的内容，放到24年后的今天依然让人觉得毫不过时。有些细节的先锋性放到美国大选结束后这个语境下看，甚至让人不由得起鸡皮疙瘩。
在这个新媒体崛起纸媒没落的时代，facebook和twitter占据了大部分美国人的新闻来源，而微信公众号和朋友圈则成了中国人的。科技带来的便捷性无须多言，但似乎很少有人关心接受信息和知识的所必须的能力。正如学习如何使用电脑这种技能一样，「信息的接收」也是一个需要正确指引才能学会的技能。
但大部分人对此的反应是，「多读就好了」。是这样吗？