I will be reflecting on sophistic theory and Plato’s misgivings about it. The Sophistic Theory can be applied in a digital age, and I will reflect on its importance. Invention is the first of the 5 canons of rhetoric, searching and negotiating networks of information using multimedia and multimedia tools – Invention is going on constantly. People are always on their phones, scrolling or tapping through someone else’s posts. Whether you are conscious of it or not, the data you are viewing is being processed and internalized. The social media we use and the streaming services we subscribe to paint a picture of our digital reality, and every person has a different one, that caters to them. In class today we talked about social groups and squads. Your group of gaming buddies that used to just all join the same lobby now has the ability to form a squad. This shift from using the internet as an individual to using it as a social tool has been happening en masse especially because of the pandemic, and we are seeing a literal alternate reality form where people can socialize, work, and play in a virtual world without ever leaving their home.
Sophistic Theory
“the rhetorical scene of 4th and 5th Century BCE Greece as something of a cybernetic system, one in which the conversation/conflict between Plato and the Sophists (particularly Gorgias, in my limited reading) can be viewed as a meeting ground between distinct approaches to medial ‘extension’” (51).
Sophists focus on the rational examination of human affairs and the betterment and success of human life. I think our current system that we have created is too sophistic. We place value in the wrong places, in the amount of Instagram followers or in the number of likes. These are just arbitrary means of judging what is in front of your face, there is no true tell of actual value. The world seems to be aligning itself with this line of thinking, focusing on the image being presented instead of the presenter. Plato’s allegory of the cave helps me understand this outlook, since an image is being projected onto a wall and the viewer is coerced into watching. The cave is not a place that you want to be, settling as a consumer instead of taking your rightful place as a creator.