Was Plato right to be fearful, or better put ambivalent, about the advent of writing in his age? Nowadays, Plato’s critique of writing is not infrequently surfaced by the cheerleaders of artificial intelligence, who consider it as a backwards and futile response towards a revolutionary new technology.
Yet, Plato, and the Socratics in general, did change the course of history by means of their critique. As Hannah Arendt forcefully argues in her “Truth and Politics,” the Socratics offered a powerful and important antidote against the increasing antagonism between politics – as it became overconfident through the rise of rhetoric – and fact. Facts, while stubborn, can be assailed by public opinion, and Socratic dialogue, institutionalized foremost in the court, can stem this upcoming tide.
On top of that, it should not be forgotten that oral culture, the culture captured after all in writing through in the Socratic dialogues, did not disappear but remained firmly part of everyday (and institutional) life in Ancient Greece.
Today, we might find ourselves in a worse situation than Plato in his time. That is, the cultural transformation that we are a part of is not slowly assailing our ways of life and institutions, but has in a matter of a few decades completely engulfed our personal and public existence.
I am not just thinking here about the advent of artificial intelligence, but about the society-wide introduction of the word processor since the 1970’s. While this may seem like a long time ago, the way in which thinking and the expression of thinking has changed within this time, which also completely envelops my own lifetime, should not be underestimated.
This is not the place to offer a full critique of this transformation, which also knows many empirical avenues (e.g., neuroscientific research into the cognitive effects of handwriting compared to typing). Rather, I would like to focus on one particular area of human activity: of doing research. Until surprisingly recently, all research was done completely “manually.”
A researcher would typically gather knowledge from physical books and printed journals, as well as from written notes, brainstorm and perform ideation in written notebooks, and compose a manuscript through handwriting (or mechanical typing). Thinking and writing happened at a slower pace, and in a smaller universe of sources and pieces of knowledge, often more significantly impacted by dialogues with peers.
This process of thinking and writing has been almost completely overturned in a matter of decades. Habits of keeping written notes are still lingering with the older generations of academics, but are quickly disappearing. Close reading of lengthy texts, it almost goes without saying with the publishing of the new Pisa results, is a diminishing skill in a paradoxically ever more educated population. Artificial intelligence promises to only further replace these ‘older’ skills.
It almost seems unthinkable today not to be engulfed by the technological changes that brought about these transformations. That is, which academic can imagine today to not use a computer to write a text? To not use the Internet to gather sources? To not organize an ever growing list of sources in Zotero or some other reference manager? And, for an increasing number of us, who can imagine not using any generative AI application while doing research?
It is not my intention to completely ‘turn back time,’ and return to some nostalgic past that never existed. However, in order for practices to be cultivated they need a shared footing. We can individually try to resist the surging tide of technology, but this itself seems futile. Instead, we need non-digital practices that have a place and a standing, and thereby motivate people to engage in them.
This, exactly, is the idea behind the ‘journal for non-digital thinking.’
This journal explores publishing formats that explicitly target non-digital modes of thinking and writing, and gather a (small) community of practitioners to give non-digital research a ‘voice.’
This journal is explicitly an experiment, and hence may be a ‘waste of time,’ in that it might not at all succeed. It therefore calls upon people with a certain appetite for risk and probably also with sufficient personal space (considering work and care duties) to engage in a little adventure.
For the moment, I envision starting with two different formats of publishable output, which I will briefly elaborate upon:
- Hand written or typed manuscripts that more or less correspond what would be considered an academic journal paper. For instance, these can be essays written down in a notebook – the primary requirement being that the text is fully readable (e.g., if your hand-writing is so-so, consider writing on a mechanical typewriter). After digital submission and acceptance of an abstract, I will share my physical address for submission of the paper, and scan the paper. The scanned version will be sent out to reviewers for comments. A final version can either be hand-written or typed based on the reviews. This version will be posted on the journal website.
- A topical collection of letters, led by one or multiple ‘guest editors.’ Letters are shorter scientific interventions (e.g., about 2000 words) that build upon each other through commentary. For instance, a scholar publishes a first letter offering a statement, another scholar writes a rebuttal letter, and a great number of peers can comment on the ongoing debate.
The setting up of this journal is still work in progress, but if you would like to get involved you are very welcome to get in touch; you can reach me by email on wessel[dot]reijers[at]uni-paderborn[dot]de.
Positive Luddism 
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