Why Postman matters Visionary or technophobe?
Kavanagh, Peter
Peter Kavanagh WHY POSTMAN NATTERS A necessary critique of technology The death in October of Neil Postman, one of the most perceptive critics of technological change and an author of seminal...
...Change is double-edged...
...Postman and the CBC were meant for each other...
...When he asked these questions about the fax machine, for example, he came down on the side of using it...
...He also liked the example because it made clear that the struggle with technology is not a modern dilemma but one that has been with us for a long time, since we first began making tools in fact...
...Postman was a critic in the grand manner of Ivan Illich and Jacques Ellul...
...In books, lectures, and essays he ceaselessly reminded his audience that human beings were social animals with the power to create technologies that could radically reshape the nature of society and even the nature of humanity itself...
...For one thing, it demonstrated the power of technology to transform society...
...He thought it made sense to talk with people where they were...
...Postman wanted you to think about how the alphabet changed oral cultures, what the printing press did to religion, how education created childhood, why testing for standards meant the radical rethinking of the school system...
...He argued that the greatest force for change in education had come about not from theory or philosophy but from the technological ability to do mass standardized testing...
...If this technological solution solves a legitimate problem, what unforeseen problems will using it create...
...His own conclusions were an invitation, an insistence that we figure out things for ourselves...
...Both loved ideas and loved wrestling with the implications of social and economic developments...
...Postman never argued that this was a bad change...
...In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Viking Press), he warned of the danger of being inundated by sheer data and trivia...
...He liked the example for a couple of reasons...
...When you called his office at New York University, where he taught for thirty-nine years, the recorded voice informed you that New York University had an automatic phone answering service but that Professor Neil Postman didn't use it...
...His recorded message was a small, amusing reminder of the sorts of questions he wanted people to ask about "labor-saving" technologies...
...Whose problem is it...
...The fax allows people to communicate at a time of mutual convenience...
...Technology, he argued, was too little understood, too much hyped, and too dangerous to let loose without careful thought...
...After the imposition of standardized testing in the 1940s, the purpose of education changed from learning to measuring...
...He thought if we asked questions, demanded answers, insisted on forethought, then we'd be less impressed by the claims of technology, the promise of progress...
...In books such as The Disappearance of Childhood, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (both Vintage Books), and his classic Teaching as a Subversive Activity (Delacorte Press), he scrutinized every aspect of schooling, from curricula to the purpose and meaning of teaching...
...The prescience and acuity of his critique have become more evident over time...
...He insisted that we pay special attention to what is right under our noses, to what we take for granted...
...Peter Kavanagh WHY POSTMAN NATTERS A necessary critique of technology The death in October of Neil Postman, one of the most perceptive critics of technological change and an author of seminal works on education, culture, and communication, brings a certain quiet into public discourse...
...As it turned out, both he and I loved the fax machine...
...In fact, he saw it as an instance of technology being used by people instead of people being subordinated to technology...
...There were those who wanted to praise Postman, thinking him a kind of guru from New York who had all the answers about how to fix our schools, how to stop children from watching too much television, and how to make sense of rapid change...
...He charmed, amused, and delighted the capacity crowd for over an hour...
...Using the example of the printing press, Postman showed how making Bibles widely available challenged the authority of the church...
...Postman didn't understand why messages had to be transmitted that way, especially with the implicit sense of urgency the mechanical voice and blinking lights created...
...I was a producer at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio and I wanted him to become our "technology columnist," a regular contributor who would talk about the issues that technological change raised every day...
...Not so with voice mail...
...He reminded us that change almost always comes with a promise of benefit and a silence about costs...
...The simplistic critique of Postman is that he was a Luddite, a technophobe...
...He questioned the utility of computers, television, even standardized testing, and he subjected everything to the fierce glare of his penetrating intellect, his mastery of history, and his facility with language...
...Postman was not advocating a retreat from the modern world...
...It's true that he wrote harsh and condemnatory things about television and automobiles and computers and voice mail and dozens of other technological "advances," but he never lacked appreciation for the technical prowess of any particular technology...
...The other half of the audience wanted to challenge, dispute, and argue against Postman's ideas, to demonstrate that he was wrong, out of date, a Luddite in a suit...
...Rather, he insisted we ask basic questions: What is the problem this technology is supposed to solve...
...Peter Kavanagh is a senior producer with Current Affairs, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio program...
...Postman dealt with the adoration and the challenges in the same manner...
...One only hopes Neil Postman will continue to be heard, at least by some, above the din...
...Mass printing of the Bible helped to break up the universal church, reshape countries, launch wars, as well as make possible a new sense of human possibility...
...Education was about learning how to think, not about the mere accumulation of information...
...Postman, they pointed out, had just gotten off a jet plane and used modern communication techniques to argue against the very innovations that made him famous and helped make his ideas known to others...
...He wasn't shy about popping up in schools, on TV, or online...
...The audience was divided into two camps...
...Once everyone could consult the source, opinions no longer simply flowed from the center...
...I first met Postman in the mid-1990s when he was speaking about Technopoly, his latest book, at the Ontario Science Centre...
...He simply asked questions...
Vol. 130 • November 2003 • No. 20
