Phaedrus

Phaedrus is a dialogue between the main characters Phaedrus and Socretes all about language and rhetoric which is perfect for our class! Plato was so intelligent, his level of thinking in 370 BC is even hard for me to grasp, imagine what he could've done if he had the resources we have today with the internet and the language as it has evolved currently.

 He talked about how when words are spoken they cannot be taken back. It reminded me of the discussion we had Wednesday in class about Chris Kluwe. He, and other celebrities, can delete their offensive tweets but they will still always be out there. People so easily screenshot celebrities tweets and even create fake tweets. I'm sure Plato would have a lot to say about the destruction of language through technology if he was still around.

The way this dialogue was structured reminded me so much of my Philosophy 101 class and all the philosophical dialogues we had to read. Specifically the dialogue by John Perry called A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. It was about a woman on her death bed having a conversation with one of her friends about life after death. The friend claimed because we all have identities, there must be an afterlife. It was a very interesting argument, not sure if I bought the friend's reasoning though.

Meggs Chapter 3: Alphabets

Summary:

This chapter was about the ancient alphabet and the history of alphabets all around the world. The earliest form of the alphabet was cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and Chinese calligraphy. However, these forms of written communication didn't last long because they were so time consuming and difficult to master. From there, other forms were born.

Simply put, the alphabet is a set of visual symbols (in English, called letters) used to represent the sounds of spoken language. The Greek alphabet has really laid the groundwork for making them one of the most powerful empires in the western world through their accomplishments in science, philosophy, and the democratic government.

Examples:
The iPhone has really revolutionized the way people communicate with each other. Text messages are the most used form of written communication on a day to day basis. Along with the iPhone comes emojis. When reading this chapter I was struck by the comparison in my mind of things like hieroglyphics to emoticons. You can tell a whole story with emojis, without any written letters and still get the point across, which reminds me a lot of hieroglyphics because they are also pictures.

Another modern day example that we all see day to day are greek letters with sororities and fraternities. I can't go anywhere without seeing someone wearing greek letters on their shirt, car, backpack, even their laptops. These combination of 3 greek letters communicate to all of us that they are a member of a sorority or a fraternity, which is much different than what they communicated in the past. 

Critique:
This chapter was very informative and interesting. I never think about where the alphabet originated, it's just something that has always been there in my mind. This makes me think very differently even as I type this about all the ways letters have had to evolve in order to have me typing on this computer right now. Without the alphabet, society as we know it would be far less developed.