Neil Postman died this week. For those of you who aren’t familiar with his name, I’ve copied a couple of excerpts of his profound thinking about technology, information and entertainment, and the role they play in our lives. I’ve followed those excerpts with links to more Postman information. I encourage you to explore his ideas.
From the speech “Five Things We
Need to Know about Technological Change,” delivered in
… these are my five ideas about technological change:
§
First, that we
always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the
price.
§
Second, that
there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to
persuade the losers that they are really winners.
§
Third, that there
is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social
prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is
not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated
space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade
community life. And so on.
§
Fourth,
technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes
everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of
Bill Gates.
§
And fifth,
technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural
order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good
for us.
The forward from Amusing
Ourselves to Death, published in 1986:
We
were keeping our eye on 1984.
When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in
praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else
the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian
nightmares.
But
we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another -
slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous
Huxley's Brave
New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley
and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be
overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big
Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history.
As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the
technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What
Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there
would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one
who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be
reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be
concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of
irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we
would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave
New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are
ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's
almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by
inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.
Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This
book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Links about Neil Postman and his work:
§
The New York
Times obituary of Neil Postman
§
Find
Neil Postman’s books at Amazon
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http://www.alteich.com/links/postman.htm
§
http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Postman.html
§
http://www.edtechnot.com/notpostman.html
§
http://www.netaccess.on.ca/~galambos/neil_postman_stuff.htm#Neil%20Postman%20Links
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