Is anyone else a Neil Postman fan?
I eventually recommend Neil Postman's writing to anyone I can. These books are absolutely fantastic, especially Technopoly, though I'd also recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death and The End of Education (pun in the title intended).
One of Neil Postman's big contributions to how I think was by explaining an extended notion of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Instead of trying to insist that different human languages have different ways of communication, Neil Postman makes the assertion that different media, books, oral communication, TV, radio, the internet, have world-views embedded into them. So, you will (almost) never find a serious philosophical discussion in a film. Books, being linear can afford to give a cursory examination, and the person reading can follow at their own pace, while film can't do that. However, films are better at communicating emotion, so the stories in film are more experience/emotion/in-the-moment driven. Postman's argument was better, so ignore the weaknesses in my summary. I'm just trying to give some flavor to the type of things he wrote, like he also predicted how people would communicate on the internet.
The thing which really stands out to me is how Neil Postman was just a good thinker. He wasn't a one hit wonder for ideas. I'd be willing to read his thoughts on just about anything, even if I disagree. So anyway, read him! You won't have any regerts.
I recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death every chance I get. Even though it was written to describe television media, I find that the general premise is just as fitting, if not more, in application to the WWW. Here's a great article (written by Neil Postman's son) discussing it within the context of the Trump presidency: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley
Great article. I can see Neil Postman eventually becoming part of standard university curricula given just how right he was in his predictions.
Huuuge fan of his, after reading Technolopy and then Amusing Ourselves To Death.
Before reading him I was already one of those people that had very strong opinions on the importance of the media we consume to our lives. I genuinely believe watching bad television, bad films, and now bad social media internet content will make you a worse person. Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death I think supports this contention, and goes further to contend that our media consumption is making our whole society worse.
I think Technolopy should be mandatory reading in the software industry, which is overrun by a broken view what a technology is and thus draws harmfully tight boundaries around their company's products and what they are responsible for. For example, Facebook is a social and political technology as much as it is the code running on its servers. The company would not exist as it does but for the cultural practices of its users and the legislation enacted to govern internet activity. As Postman says, technologies like Facebook "come with their own agenda" and actively shapes its users, beyond being a tool of mere representation or reflection.