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Neil Postman

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 - October 5, 2003) was an American professor, media theorist, and cultural critic who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University. Postman was a humanist, who believed that "there is a limit to the promise of new technology, and that it cannot be a substitute for human values." [1]

Contents

Education and career

Postman was born and spent most of his life in New York City. In 1953, he graduated from State University of New York at Fredonia where he played basketball. He received a master's degree in 1955 and an Ed.D in 1958, both from the Teachers College, Columbia University, and started teaching at New York University (NYU) in 1959.

In 1971, he founded a graduate program in media ecology at the Steinhardt School of Education of NYU. In 1993 he was appointed a University Professor, the only one in the School of Education, and was chairman of the Department of Culture and Communication until 2002. Among his students are authors Dennis Smith, Jay Rosen, Joshua Meyrowitz and Paul Levinson.

Works

Postman wrote 18 books and more than 200 magazine and newspaper articles for such periodicals as The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Time Magazine, The Saturday Review, The Harvard Education Review, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stern, and Le Monde. He was the editor of the quarterly journal ETC.; A review of General Semantics (founded by S.I. Hayakawa in 1943) from 1976 to 1986. He was also on the editorial board of The Nation.

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Postman's best known book is Amusing Ourselves to Death, published in 1985, a historical narrative which deplores the decline of the communication medium as television images have replaced the written word. Postman argues that television confounds serious issues with entertainment, demeaning and undermining political discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only passive information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning.

He draws on the ideas of media theorist Marshall McLuhan to argue that different media are appropriate for different kinds of knowledge, and describes how oral, literate, and televisual cultures value and transfer information in different ways. He states that 19th century America was the pinnacle of rational argument, an Age of Reason, in which the dominant communication medium was the printed word. During this period, complicated arguments could be transmitted without oversimplification. Amusing Ourselves to Death was translated into eight languages and sold 2,000,000 copies worldwide.

Technopoly

Neil Postman defines “Technopoly” as a society that believes that “the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency, that technical calculation is in all respects superior to human judgment ... and that the affairs of citizens are best guided and conducted by experts.” [2]

Postman argues that the United States is the only country to have developed into a Technopoly. He claims that the U.S has been inundated with Technophiles who do not see the downside of technology. This is dangerous because Technophiles want more technology and thus more information. However, according to Postman, it is impossible for a technological innovation to have only a one-sided effect. With the ever-increasing amount of information available Postman argues that: “Information has become a form of garbage, not only incapable of answering the most fundamental human questions but barely useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems.” (Postman, 1992. p.69)

In an interview on January 17 1996, Postman re-emphasized his solution for Technopoly, which was to give students an education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, so they may become adults who “use technology rather than being used by it”. [1]

Postman has been criticized by some as being a luddite, despite his statement in the conclusion of Amusing Ourselves to Death that "We must not delude ourselves with preposterous notions such as the straight Luddite position."

Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection

Postman delivered a speech at the National Convention for the Teachers of English in 1969 titled "Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection". In it Postman encouraged teachers to help their students "distinguish useful talk from bullshit". He argued that it was the most important skill students could learn, and that teaching it would help students understand their own values and beliefs.

Quotations

  • Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.[3]
  • I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology. The "forum" that I think is best suited for this is our educational system. If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.[1]
  • Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion. [4]
  • A new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.[5]
  • Television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.[6]
  • 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 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.[7]
  • A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.

Selected bibliography

  • Television and the Teaching of English (1961).
  • Linguistics: A Revolution in Teaching with Charles Weingartner (Dell Publishing, 1966).
  • Teaching as a Subversive Activity with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1969)
  • The Soft Revolution: A Student Handbook For Turning Schools Around with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1971).
  • The School Book: For People Who Want to Know What All the Hollering is About with Charles Weingartner (Delacorte Press, 1973).
  • Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk: How We Defeat Ourselves By the Way We Talk and What to Do About It (1976).
  • Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979).
  • The Disappearance of Childhood (1982).
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985).
  • Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education (1988).
  • How to Watch TV News, with Steve Powers (1992).
  • Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992).
  • The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).
  • Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (1999).

References

  1. ^ a b c PBS Newshour Interview, 1996
  2. ^ (Postman, 1992. p.51)
  3. ^ from The Disappearance of Childhood
  4. ^ Talk given at the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart.
  5. ^ "Informing Ourselves to Death" (1990)
  6. ^ from the Neil Postman book "Amusing Ourselves To Death"
  7. ^ from the Neil Postman book "Amusing Ourselves To Death"

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