It is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away.
Neil PostmanEverything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings.
Neil PostmanPeople of a television culture need โplain languageโ 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 PostmanComputers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
Neil PostmanAnyone 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