“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 (1931-2003)
"Argument is the soul of an education"
—Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
"Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods."
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
"We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets."
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose...”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of "crap.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“In America, the least amusing people are its professional entertainers.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“Without a purpose, schools are houses of detention, not attention”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
“there is no idea so stupid that you can’t find a professor who will believe it.”
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)
"The invention of new and various kinds of communication has given a voice and an audience to many people whose opinions would otherwise not be solicited, and who, in fact, have little else but verbal excrement to contribute to public issues."
― Neil Postman (1931-2003)