To understand this piece of art and philosophy, the reader must consider that perhaps Plato means what Socrates says, and although Socrates is saying it Theaetetus, Plato is saying it to the reader. When Socrates corrects Theaetetus for giving him an answer about his first question, "What is knowledge?" Plato is also correcting us. Theaetetus's mistake is simple: Instead of thinking meta-cognitively about what knowledge is (in philosophy this question is known as Epistemology), he responds from his own point of view.
Instead of seeing knowledge for its utility, Socrates elaborates a new hypothetical point of view through questioning. Notice that Socrates's method is not what people today would call "The Socratic Method," because instead of allowing the students to teach themselves through open-ended questions, Socrates clearly instructs Theaetetus by leading questions and challenging rhetoric, and there is an audience of students, as usual, but again, in true Socratic dialogue, there needs to be a specific student who is brave and competent enough to respond correctly to the teacher.
This means that although it seems that the students are learning, they are really unlearning. Instead of a teacher giving a lecture, it is a teacher slowly questioning away the students' assumptions until they realize the full weight of their assumptions. There is simply no satisfactory reason not to analyze the very nature of reality on this point, because after all, as Socrates notices, human beings are used to knowledge and reason, so it seems normal, but when taken for its philosophical weight, the implication of Socrates's arguments is that reality is based on order, and knowledge is correctly understanding the "logos." Meanwhile, Socrates is being tried and the reader knows he will die. He is contemplating the nature of reality because he is about to die.
