According to Socrates, writing destroys memory.
The fact is that writing produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it. They need not to exercise their memories, being able to rely on what is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves.
So it's not a recipe for memory, but for reminding.
Socrates agrees when Phaedrus calls written discourse "only a kind of ghost" of the "living, animate discourse of a man who really knows."
The true discourse, Socrates says, is inscribed in men's souls, and is delivered through speech.
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