Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 4

This will be my last treatment of Postman, and the following quote does well to leave the reader with a clear idea of Postman's concerns. Whether you agree with him or not, Postman goes out with a bang:

To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple... Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for the absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement. (AOD, pg 157-58)

Since finishing Postman's work, I've also read Nicholas Carr's The Shallows, and Nancy Baym's Personal Connections in the Digital Age. In one way or another these books seem to rely on Postman, even if not explicitly. I've intentionally left The Shallows out of these discussions because while  it was certainly more developed and, in my opinion, less speculative - it nevertheless seemed to be a sophisticated update to AOD.[1]

On the other hand, Baym relies on commentators like Postman (and Walter Ong along with their contemporary counterparts like Carr) as opposing voices in the debate. While I think she is generally very moderate in her appraisal of digital media and its influence on relationships, she does come out in stark opposition to what I've recorded here from Postman.

I will offer a quote or two in the future to briefly orient the interested reader to Baym's position, especially in relationship to Postman, since I've spent so much time here covering his perspective.

I've really enjoyed Amusing Ourselves to Death. It helped me formulate better questions about digital media and gave me some important framework through which I was better able to understand the history of the debate around new media - especially as I read Carr. Postman gives a lot of credit to the prophetic power of Aldous Huxely (who suggested that technology would turn the enemy from a suspicious thug to a smiling entertainer), but I think regardless of where we fall in the debate it is safe to say that Postman was ahead of his time in a lot of important ways as well.

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[1] We've also talked about Carr's article in RWS511, so much of the discussion would seem redundant.