Neil Postman was born on March 8, 1931 in New York City and died of lung cancer on October 5, 2003 in Flushing, Queens. Postman was an american author, media theorist and cultural critic. He had written 18 books and over 200 magazine and newspaper articles. He is best known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which was translated into eight languages and sold 200,000 copies worldwide. Postman’s strong belief that too much technology would take away from the socializing and learning process was his main inspiration for many of his writings. In 1992, Neil Postman came out with his book Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, in which he defines “Technopoly” as a society that mainly relies on efficiency. A society where technical calculations is superior to all human calculations. In this, Postman states that the United States is the only country so far to develop into a technopoly. He believes that the United States does not understand the downside of technology. The U.S. keeps creating more technology therefore more information that is hardly useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems. Through Neil Postman’s writings, he gave a new way of looking at technology by stating that too much technology makes people forget how to socialize how humans should, that the growth of technology creates information that is not important to society. He wants adults to “use technology rather than being used by it”.
Neil Postman
ReplyDeleteNeil Postman was born on March 8, 1931 in New York City and died of lung cancer on October 5, 2003 in Flushing, Queens. Postman was an american author, media theorist and cultural critic. He had written 18 books and over 200 magazine and newspaper articles. He is best known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which was translated into eight languages and sold 200,000 copies worldwide.
Postman’s strong belief that too much technology would take away from the socializing and learning process was his main inspiration for many of his writings. In 1992, Neil Postman came out with his book Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology, in which he defines “Technopoly” as a society that mainly relies on efficiency. A society where technical calculations is superior to all human calculations. In this, Postman states that the United States is the only country so far to develop into a technopoly. He believes that the United States does not understand the downside of technology. The U.S. keeps creating more technology therefore more information that is hardly useful in providing coherent direction to the solution of even mundane problems.
Through Neil Postman’s writings, he gave a new way of looking at technology by stating that too much technology makes people forget how to socialize how humans should, that the growth of technology creates information that is not important to society. He wants adults to “use technology rather than being used by it”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman