The written word endures, the spoken word disappears Neil Postman More Quotes by Neil Postman More Quotes From Neil Postman Certainty abolishes hope, and robs us of renewal. Neil Postman abolish renewal certainty Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it. Neil Postman political mistake believe The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are "false", but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false. Neil Postman keys self way The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them. Neil Postman priorities perspective knowing A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70) Neil Postman evaluation book past 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. Neil Postman technological-change technology ideas Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself. Neil Postman curriculum television ideas Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it. Neil Postman technology mean thinking People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience. Neil Postman plain-language law people The price of maintaining membership in the establishment is unquestioning acceptance of authority. Neil Postman membership maintaining acceptance Voting is the next-to-last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge, of course, is giving your opinion to a pollster. Neil Postman voting lasts giving Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92) Neil Postman knowing culture television [It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87) Neil Postman entertainment matter television I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology. Neil Postman growth technology thinking For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Neil Postman vegas messages television . . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world. Neil Postman wells people world The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. (128) Neil Postman television-commercials consumers character The spectacle we find in true religions has as its purpose enchantment, not entertainment. The distinction is critical. By endowing things with magic, enchantment is a means through which we may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which we distance ourselves from it. Neil Postman distance magic mean Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration. Neil Postman design community ideas Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since. Neil Postman technology age ideas
