[wenc]

Yes. For those who haven't come across this factoid, it actually wasn't Plato, but Socrates who famously lamented the harmful effects of writing on memory and teaching. Socrates was a big fan of knowledge transmission through dialogue and discourse.

Socrates never wrote anything down, but Plato did, so ironically now we know about Socrates' disdain of writing through Plato's writings (in this case, the Phaedrus). Quoting a paraphrase from Wikipedia [1]

"... writing can do little but remind those who already know. Unlike dialectic and rhetoric, writing cannot be tailored to specific situations or students; the writer does not have the luxury of examining his reader's soul in order to determine the proper way to persuade. When attacked it cannot defend itself, and is unable to answer questions or refute criticism."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedrus_(dialogue)#Rhetoric,_...

[kps]

It's really not obvious how much of ‘Socrates’ in Plato is actually Socrates and how much is Plato trading on Socrates' name.

[wenc]

True, what Socrates is purported to have said in the Phaedrus could well be a concoction of Plato's -- we'll never know for sure.

However we do know at least by virtue of the existence of the Phadrus that Plato himself did not subscribe to the position attributed to Socrates in the Phaedrus.

[bwanab]

Socrates being probably the most quoted person of all time who never wrote anything (giving Homer the benefit of doubt since he did leave a couple of epic poems).