(Warning & disclaimer: I am about to spout off on stuff of which I know & remember very little, but since seeing some incendiary YouTube clips, I have been moved by the Bloggory Spirit to produce a mini brainfart... Proceed at your own risk.)
I love this man. The following text is the thought-provoking introduction from Neil Postman's "Technopoly" (1993), which I read during my first semester at school, and since then, it has strongly influenced how I view technologies both groundbreaking and antiquated. (What would you call that land between Technophobia and Technophilia? Technostraddledome? Technoliteracia? Technolibria?)
"You will find in Plato's Phaedrus a story about Thamus, the king of a great city of Upper Egypt. For people such as ourselves, who are inclined (in Thoreau's phrase) to be tools of our tools, few legends are more instructive than his. The story, as Socrates tells it to his friend Phaedrus, unfolds in the following way: Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who was the inventor of many things, including number, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth exhibited his inventions to King Thamus, claiming that they should be made widely known and available to Egyptians. Socrates continues:
'Thamus inquired into the use of each of them, and as Theuth went through them expressed approval or disapproval, according as he judged Theuth's claims to be well or ill founded. It would take too long to go through all that Thamus is reported to have said for and against each of Theuth's inventions. But when it came to writing, Theuth declared. "Here is an accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom." To this, Thamus replied, "Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.'"
The introduction of any Trojan Horse will never be without the old man in sackcloth and ashes, screaming to the heedless masses about maintaining some degree of wariness over shiny, new, pretty things. The author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and "Technopoly" ~ both indespensible texts for any citizen of any planet, Postman provided countless references for papers I wrote throughout my time at school, whether it was for communications, film, humanities, Canadian Studies, publishing, English, or history classes. (And I'm sure if I took any psych, sociology, or anthro classes, I would've worn my copy down even further.)
Despite the age of his books and some of these clips, the relevence with which his words echo in our current technolophilic society has not diminished at all; in fact, I'm willing to bet the intensity of global dependence on technology is exponentially accelerating due to increased affordability and accessibility of gadgets. Is the democratization of information a good thing for planetary citizens, or will the massive proliferation of information spilling from all corners of the globe encourage us to become increasingly numb to the fact that every story we come across is the depiction of someone's actual existence? Is the built-in obsolescence of our tools today even more diminished in longevity than those built in, say, the seventies, thus encouraging this hegemony of technological enslavement? What is the usefulness of information gluttony if all it eventually creates in us is a sense of cynical complacency or emotional exhaustion? (Geez, listening to these clips of his interviews is really triggering my desire to read and write again on these topics, especially now that it's been fifteen years since I was first exposed to this way of thinking. Which makes me miss school... again. However, I do seem to remember a lot of hair-pulling deadlock when it came to these discussion topics in tutorials...)
Ironically, it's funny how much more I appreciate this guy now than I did throughout my time at school. Indeed, this whole interaction is brimming with irony, considering how I'm accessing his old interviews and watching him speak through a medium of which he's wary, and yet there's a benefit to this as I'd lent out my old favourite, "Technopoly," have never seen it since, and had forgotten many of his thought-provoking concerns. And I'm spending vast amounts of time writing and researching on the computer and have felt more mentally invigorated than I have in ages, though at the expense of my children and my interaction with them. The thing is, I am definitely a strong proponent for the use of information technologies, yet I am aware of the drug-like, addictive properties of spending time in front of the screen, and how it affects my social existence. (By the same token, I know that without the benefits of Internet use, even the most stalwart love of dogged, stubborn friends who nag me to write back would eventually wane in capitulation because I can really, really suck at keeping in touch. So thank you, fast-blast e-mail!!!)
There is a happy medium to all of this; I have a feeling that the key to all of this interaction between new media and technology and human interaction is finding a balance where we know when to stop interacting with machines and turn to face the people standing behind us for a meaningful conversation. Like our mates and kids (hee hee)!
Neil Postman on Cyberspace ~ the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (1995)
Neil Postman's Three Questions to ask yourself when confronted with a new technology:
1. What is the problem to which this technology is a solution?
2. Whose problem is it actually?
3. If there is a legitimate problem here that is solved by the technology, what other problems will be created by my using this technology?
Also, especially in this day and age of the Policing State and supersaturation of recordable forms of communication, how much of ourselves, our beliefs, and our identities do we want to reveal through any particular medium that could enable our confrontation with this information at a later date, perhaps even on the witness stand?
For fun, here's a quote from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" chillingly and hauntingly put into context. U2 definitely referenced this on their ZooTV tour, on so many different levels, but hopefully with less of a sense of futility.
Neil Postman's "Amusing Discourse" ~ edited by Chris Westray
(Above illustration by Shinsuke Bandome)
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