People love to cite the Phaedrus (although usually they just cite Plato) as a reason for why we should discard the warnings or fears about the cognitive effects of new technology as baseless.

But I think that this is foolish. Firstly, the fears weren't baseless! There's no question that the replacement of an oral culture by a literate culture meant the loss of certain cognitive skills for some people.

But more importantly, even if those fears were baseless, a fear in the past being baseless does not mean a similar one in the present is baseless. From our vantage point we can see the benefits of a literate society, but are we confident that what comes next will be as beneficial? Maybe it will be far more beneficial than literacy was, or maybe it will heighten inequalities to feudal levels. Either way, it's moving at a much more rapid pace than the spread of literacy, so we have much less time to reflect. It pays to be prudent here.