Neil Postman, writer, educator, critic and communications theorist, has written many books, including Technopoly. Mr. Postman is one of America's most visible cultural critics, who attempts to analyze culture and history in terms of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it seems more important to consider what society loses from new technology than what it gains. To illustrate this, Postman uses the Egyptian mythology called "The Judgment of Thamus," which attempts to explain how the development of writing in Egyptian civilization decreases the amount of knowledge and wisdom in the society. He traces the roots of technology to show how technology impacts the moral and intellectual attitude of people. Postman seems to criticize societies with high technologies, yet he seems naive to the benefits technology has given society. Postman can be considered fairly conservative in his views regarding technology. His lucid writing style stimulates thoughts on issues in today's technological society; however because of his moral interpretations and historical revisions, his ethos is arguable. For every good insight he makes, he skips another mark completely. Postman divides history into three types. He begins his argument with discussion of tool-using cultures. In these cultures, technology has an "ideological bias" to action that is not thought about by users. He says that this is a time of "logic, sequence, objectivity, detachment, and discipline," where historical figures such as Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and others clung to the theology of their age. This was a world with God, which was concerned with truth and not power. Postman remarks that the mass production of books and the invention of the printing pre... ... middle of paper ... ... Review. v42 n18 (Sept. 14, 1992) Copyright National review Inc. :58. Lubar, Steven." Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860." Smithsonian Institution. http://www.si.sgi.com/organiza/museums/nmah/homepage/docs/engin10.htm ( 1986). Mack, John. Out of Many, v 2, Prenther- Hall, Inc (1995) : 405-423. Moulthrop, Stuart. "Very Like a Book" Wired Subscribe. Wired ventures LTD.http://www.hotwired.com/wired/3.11/departments/moulthrop.if.html (1995). Ravvin, David. "Without Judgement or Morality, Technology becomes God" (I couldn't connect on-line so couldn't get the addess again when I went to do it- it kept saying the file was not found). Star, Alexander. "Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology." New Republic. v207 n5 (July 27, 1992):59. Weir, Stuart. Nation. v255, n6 ( Aug. 31, 1992) The Nation Company Inc.: 216.
Technology, Culture, Society. Ed. Crowley, D.J., and P. Heyer. Allyn & Bacon/Pearson, 2010. 74-77. Print.
Throughout the passage, Postman argues Thamus perspective of his view on technology being a burden. Postman states, “Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either-or, but this-and-that.” (Postman, 1992). As he describes, Thamu’s perception of technology was due to his belief that the effect that writing would
Williams, R. & Edge, D. (1996). The social shaping of technology. Research Policy, 25 (6), pp. 865--899.
In short, Postman wishes to trace how the “Age of Typography” has turned into the “Age of Television” and how the latter age requires all communication to take the form of entertainment.
Meyer, David R. The Roots of American Industrialization. N.p.: JHU, 2003. N. pag. Google Books. JHU Press. Web. 29 Sept. 2013
In the essay “Into the Electronic Millennium” (1994) Sven Birkerts argues that the “electronic order” (2) is the source of three detrimental effects on the future of society: “language erosion” (19), “flattening of historical perspectives” (21), and “waning of the private self” (23).
Technology has become such a big part of society today, children pick up tablets and immediately know how to use them, they know how to pull up the games they want to play, the shows they want to watch, or even cameras to take pictures. While technology has immensely improved the way people live, do people realize how much technology has changed their way of thinking? Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” (1984/2012) and Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” provide some of the effects that technology has on the way people think. When looking at these two essays, there are four clear effects: people seek out information that does not invoke thought, information has to
People all around agree that technology is changing how we think, but is it changing us for the better? Clive Thompson definitely thinks so and this book is his collection of why that is. As an avid fiction reader I wasn’t sure this book would captivate me, but the 352 pages seemingly flew past me. The book is a whirlwind of interesting ideas, captivating people, and fascinating thoughts on how technology is changing how we work and think.
The author uses this short story to show similarities with the world today. The main point that he is trying to get across is that every technology has both good and bad effects within a society. "We are currently surrounded by throngs of zealous Theuths, one-eyed prophets who see only what new technologies can do and are incapable of imagining what they will undo" (p.5). Postman goes on to criticize Thamus for only looking at the downsides of writing and not thinking about the potential benefits to writing, that he in turn tends to
In “ 5 Things We Need To Know About Technological Change”, by Neil Postman, Postman describes the prices we have to pay each time something new is made. The first price is culture, culture always pays a price for technology. For example, cars and pollution ( and many other less obvious examples). As Postman says: “Technology giveth and technology taketh away”.The second thing to know is that there are always winners and losers in technological change. As Postman explains: “the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population”. There are always winners and losers in technological change. Winners tend to be those whose lifestyle is most closely aligned with the values of technology. The losers are those who don’t put technology on the first place. So for some technology is everything, while others are not that into it. As for the third thing that Postman describes is that in every technology there is a hidden philosophy about how the mind should work. I believe what Postman is saying is very similar to what Nicholas Carr, the author of “Tools Of The Mind” said. In “Tools of the Mind”, Carr introduces us to a new word, which he frequently uses called “intellectual ethic”, meaning an assumption implicit in a tool about how the mind should work. Carr explains how the map, clock, and writing are “intellectual technologies” that changed society and our ways
Technology is a tool created by the human race to enhance its ability to learn and grow as a collective group. Humans taper these tools, created through technological process, to their uniquely specific needs. Technology, when used in a morally sound way, can have immense benefits that help a culture grow and develop effectively as demonstrated by the society in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World; however technology can be a double edged sword in the sense that it has the power to destroy as demonstrated in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001 A Space Odyssey. When this is coupled with its own unreliability, technology can be a challenge for those who seek to control and master its enigmas. Technology does not have the ability to choose right from wrong; it is up to the beholder of this technology to make a proper moral decision.
Winston, M., & Edelbach, R. (2014). Society, Ethics, and Technology 5th Edition. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
In today’s world, technology has become a way of life, where survival is difficult without it. According to Jerry Mander, author of In the Absence of the Sacred, he mentions that technology is stressed; the effects it has on society and the living are not fully understood. The cause or diagnosis as to why Westerners are so attached to technology is because they believe life could not go on without it. They are steering away from the old practices of spirituality and religion, and are focusing on creating simpler
One of the key arguments presented by Postman is the double-edged effect of any technological innovation, and therein lies the greatest strength of his assertion. He argues that any new technology is “both a burden and a blessing” (Postman, 1993, p. 5), given that technology introduces fundamental change in society as it modifies the structure of the things people think about, the nature and language of how they think as well as the character of the community they live in where ideas develop (p.20). While the benefits of television have included the development of literacy skills at an early stage, there are also growing concerns about television content and children’s viewing habits, and how these factors ultimately affect the deve...
In his original essay, titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr explains how our brains have changed with the technology that we are using at the time. He ends his essay stating, “As we come to rely on computers to mediate out understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (328). Carr is describing here that our minds are changing to meet the technology we are using. As we move towards artificial intelligence, we risk sinking into nothing more than robots. This statement represents the theme of his essay because it is indicative of the way humans’ minds change with the technology they are using. The author cites many examples of the earliest forms of technology used today to support his argument, but does not accurately describe what technology is. His essay brings up technology such the printing press and how it changed peoples’ minds by giving them access to information, and how Friedrich Nietzsche’s use of the typewriter made his writing change from persuasive speaking to basic communication. Carrs’ writing is very clear, but he does not clearly define technology. Providing an explanation will make it easier to see how it has affected the human mind throughout history. In short, technology is the invented and innovated tools that aid in the completion of everyday tasks in measurement and recording, communication and labor.