Professor Neil Postman
EDIT6100 – Fall 2002
IT Leader Project
For Dr. Julie Moore
By: Saeid Roushanzamir
Neil Postman is the chair of the Department of Culture
and Communications and professor of media
ecology at New York University.
Postman was graduated with a B.S. from SUNY
Freedonia and earned an M.A. and Ed.D at
Columbia University.
Postman has written over 200
articles and eighteen books including:
The Disappearance of Childhood (1982)
Amusing Ourselves to death (1985)
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1993)
How to Watch a Television News Show (1994)
The End of Education (1996)
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century (1999)
I categorize Neil Postman
works into two main questions ?
What is Technology doing?
What are Schools for?
To examine technology
Let’s look at Postman’s book:
Technopoly:
The Surrender of Culture to technology.
Culture can be classify into three types:
Tool-using culture
Technocracy culture
Technopoly culture
Tool-Using Culture:
Until 17 century all cultures were tool using cultures.
Main characteristics:
A- To solve a specific problem of physical life such as in
use of waterpower, windmills, and the heavy-wheeled plow.
B- To serve the symbolic world of art, politics, myth, ritual, religion,
as in the construction of castles and cathedrals and development of
mechanical clock.
Consequence:
Tools did not attack the dignity and integrity of the
culture into which they were introduced.
Technocracy Culture:
From 17 century to early 20 century.
Main Characteristics:
Tools play a central role in the thought-world of the culture.
Everything must give way, in some degree, to their development.
Tools are not integrated into the culture; they attack the culture.
They bid to “become” the culture.
Consequence:
Tradition, Social mores, myth, politics,
ritual, and religion have to fight for their lives…
Technopoly Culture:
Early 20 century to the present.
Main characteristics:
Technopoly eliminates alternatives to itself.
And it does it by redefining what we mean by religion, by art, by
family, by politics, by history, by truth, and by privacy, by
intelligence, so that our definitions fit its new requirements.
Consequence:
Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind.
Culture seek its authorization from technology, finds its satisfaction
in technology, and takes its orders from technology
More Consequences:
“It is what happens when a culture, overcome by
information generated by technology, tries to employ
technology itself as a means to providing clear direction
and humane purpose.The effort is mostly doomed to failure.”
“Our most serious problems are not technical, nor
do they arise from inadequate information.”
So, What is technology doing?
In Postman’s search for answers,
he questions the role of technology in our lives.
Are we using technology or technology using us?
What are the effects of technology on our families?
What are the effects of technology on social institutions?
To whom technology give power and freedom?
Whose power and freedom will be reduced?
What are schools for?
Let’s look at Postman’s book:
The End of Education:
Redefining the value of school.
School’s role is to pass on the five narratives and thus provide
the young with “reasons to continue educating themselves”.
Postman refers to his narratives as “gods”
in the sense that they tell of origins and future,
give meaning to the world and provide a sense of
“community”, “personal identity”, “continuity”, and “purpose”.
gods (narratives) of the twentieth century
god of Economic Utility
god of Consumership
god of Technology
god of Multiculturalism
god of Economic Utility:
Tells children “if you will pay attention in school,
and do your homework, and score well on tests,
and behave yourself, you will be rewarded with a
Well-paying job when you are done.”
god of Consumership:
Tell children “whoever finishes with most toys
wins”
god of Technology:
The false god of Technology “tricks” people into believing that all
children will have equal access to information” and that
Technology will solve, if not all of our problems, most problems.
god of Multiculturalism:
“goodness inheres in nonwhites, especially those
Who have been victims of ‘white hegemony”
Alternative to those false gods
“gods that fail us”
Postman's offer five new gods or narratives.
A- Human beings as caretakers of Spaceship Earth
B- Narrative of Fallen Angel
C- American Experiment
D- Law of Diversity
E- Word Weavers / the World Makers
Neil Postman not only reminds us about our
ailing education system, he offers some
prescription for it.
At the end, schooling should educate our youth to give them
A sense of coherence with humanistic values.
Selected References:
Postman, N. (1993) Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Postman, N. (1996) The End of Education: Redefining the value of school
Kaplan, N. (1995) Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine
Volume 2, N 3/ march 1995