College Lecture Series - Neil Postman - "The Surrender of Culture to Technology"

we have a real treat for you this evening Dr Neil Postman Neil postman has achieved International recognition as an expert in semantics and communication Theory he's chair of the Department of culture and communication at NYU School of Education and for 11 years served as editor of Etc he's a contributing Editor to the nation a native of Brooklyn Professor Postman began his career as an elementary school teacher and then a high school teacher and he moved on to the university as a professor at New York University in English education he established an esteemed reputation in linguistics

and semantics prior to becoming New York University chair he taught the history of technology and its social effects he founded the graduate program of media ecology at New York University Dr Simon is the recipient of the George Orwell award for clarity and language and the distinguished professor Award at New York University he has authored 18 books among them are the 1960s classic amusing ourselves to death his most recent book the end of Education and tonight's topic technology the surrender of culture to technology Through The Years Neil postman has spent endless hours researching the social consequences

of television and he says this is what has made him a skeptic of technological progress in a spring 1996 issue of social policy Professor Postman said quote 20 years ago no one would have been interested in this kind of discussion now you can really draw a crowd there's an audience out there waiting to be organized to exercise pressure in making sure that we think a little more clearly on these matters people have begun to sense that there's something really not quite right about making all your aspirations related to bigger and better technology as predicted there's

an audience out here eager to hear what Neil postman has to say six weeks ago we were totally sold out to standing room only I bought my ticket in August to make sure that I'd have a seat and I can't wait any longer to hear what he has to say so please join me in a warm welcome for the distinguished and controversial Dr Neil Postman [Applause] turkey said to me about 10 minutes ago what would you do if I refer to you as Neil Simon he said would you would you lose your mind over it

but she did did you notice that yeah well thank you very much for coming I feel pretty confident in assuming that those of you here in Illinois like the rest of us in America are deeply concerned about the fact that in less than four years we will arrive at a new millennium there's a great deal of talk about the 21st century and how it will pose for us unique problems of which we know very little but for which nonetheless we are supposed to carefully prepare everyone worries about this business people Educators politicians theologians and all

the rest so I should like to begin by putting your minds at ease I doubt that the 21st century will pose problems for us that are more stunning disorienting or complex than those we faced in this century or the 19th 18th 17th or for that matter many of the centuries before that but if you are excessively nervous about the new millennium I can give you right at the start some good advice about how to confront it and the advice comes from people whom we can trust and whose thoughtfulness it's safe to say exceeds that of

President Clinton uh Newt Gingrich or even Bill Gates here's what Henry David Thoreau said all our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end here's what Gerta told us one should each day try to hear a little song read a good poem see a fine picture and if it is possible speak a few reasonable words here's what Socrates told us the unexamined life is not worth living and here is what Rabbi Hillel told us what is hateful to thee do not do to another here's what the prophet Micah told us what does the Lord

require of thee but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God and I could tell you if if I had the time although you know it well enough what Confucius Isaiah Jesus Muhammad the Buddha Spinoza and Shakespeare told us it's all the same there is no escaping from ourselves the human dilemma is as it has always been and we will solve Nothing by cloaking ourselves in technological Glory to put it plainly I suspect that the wisdom of the ages and the sages will be just as relevant in the 21st century

as it was in any other nonetheless having said all this I know perfectly well that because we live now in what everyone calls a technological Society we have some special problems that Jesus Hillel Socrates and Micah did not and could not speak of now I've chosen to address these problems by posing a series of questions about them what I intend to do is to offer seven questions about technology the answers to which can provide insights into the ways technology intrudes itself into a culture and therefore affects our social institutions the answers to the questions are

important although they will vary according to the answerer but the questions are more important answers change over time and in different circumstances even for the same person the questions endure which is which is why I think of them as a kind of permanent Armament with which citizens can protect themselves against being overwhelmed by technology now before presenting the questions I need to make two points one of which I hope will clarify what I will be saying and the other why I am saying it the first is that I make a distinction between a technology and

a medium as I see it a technology is to a medium at as the brain is to the mind like the brain a technology is a physical apparatus like the mind a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put a technology becomes a medium as it is given a place in a particular social setting as it insinuates itself into economic and political contexts a technology in other words is merely a machine a piece of hard wiring a medium is a social creation now it's useful I think to make this distinction because with

it in mind we can more easily understand that how a technology is used by any particular culture is not necessarily the only way it could be used for example if we tried if we tried to answer the question how does television affect our politics we have to understand that we're not talking about television as a technology but television as a medium there are many places in the world where television although the same technology as it is in America is an entirely different medium from that which we know I refer to places where the majority of

people do not have television sets or where only one station is available or where television doesn't operate around the clock or where most programs have as their purpose the direct furtherance of government policy or where commercials are unknown in such places television will not have the same meaning or power as it does In America which is to say it is possible for a technology to be used so that its social economic and political consequences are quite different from one culture to another that of course like the brain itself every technology has an inherent bias has

both unique technical limitations and possibilities that is to say every technology has embedded in its physical form a predisposition to it being used in certain ways and not others only those who know nothing of the history of Technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral or adaptable in fact there's an old joke that mocks such naive beliefs that belief Thomas Edison the joke goes or would have revealed his discovery of the electric light much sooner than he did except for the fact that every time he turned it on he held it to his mouth and

said hello hello well you can't use an electric light to speak to your mother in Chicago and you can't use a telephone to illuminate a page in a book in other words each technology has an agenda of its own and so to speak gives us instructions on how to fulfill its own technical destiny we have to understand that fact but we must not and especially we must not underestimate it of course we need not be tyrannized by it we do not always have to go in exactly the direction that a technology leads us toward going

we have obligations to ourselves that may supersede our obligations to any technology now having said all this in my remarks this evening I will for the most part probably use the terms technology and media nearly interchangeably because we are having this meeting in America for Americans and we're all familiar with the uses we make of our various Technologies nonetheless I hope you'll keep the distinction between these two words in mind because there are circumstances where it is Thoughtless and even misleading to use them as synonyms now to my second Preparatory point which concerns my own

attitude toward technology I think I have to tell you that I do not have email or voicemail or call waiting I do not use the word processor I've written 18 books with a pad and a yellow pen a a that was Neil Simon speaking well I guess I I I'll have to show you then I don't know if you know what this is user-friendly it's very inexpensive and I use this in a yellow pad I have no interest in the internet and I do not regard Bill Gates as a genius now I have good reasons

for each of these deficiencies and if you're interested I would be happy to give them when I am done nonetheless because of them I have a reputation as being anti-technology in fact as being something of a Neo Luddite now people who have labeled me as such usually know nothing about about the luddites because if they did they wouldn't use the term unless they meant to compliment me in any case let me assure you that I regard it as stupid to be anti-technology that would be something like being anti food we need technology to live as

we need food to live but of course if we eat too much food or eat food that has no nutritional value or eat food that is infected with disease we turn a means of survival into its opposite the same might be said of the ways in which we use technology it can be used as life enhancing and it can be used as life diminishing which means it is stupid to be categorically anti-technology but certainly not stupid to be deeply suspicious of Technology for it is clear that Technologies and the media they become can have the

most serious effects on our ways of living on our social institutions on our psychic habits and on our ways of experiencing the world therefore it seems to me that only a fool would blithely welcome any technology without having given serious thought not only to what technology will do but also to what it will undo well enough of prologue I'd like to turn to my questions question one needs to be addressed when anyone tells us about a new technology for example interactive television virtual reality the information super highway or whatever here's the question what is the

problem to which this technology is a solution now this question needs to be asked because there are technologies that are not solutions to any problem that a normal person would regard as significant although vice president de gore is certainly a normal person I am skeptical of the reasons even he gives for us spending billions of dollars to create an information Super Highway he says repeatedly that the highway will provide each of us with access to 500 or perhaps even a thousand television stations I am therefore obliged to ask is this a problem that most of

us yearn to have solved indeed need to have solved do we believe that having access to 40 or 50 stations as many of us now do is inadequate and that we cannot achieve a fulfilled life unless we have a thousand stations to choose from what exactly is the problem to be solved here if one were to say well the fundamental problem is how to get more information to more people faster and in more diverse forms could we not say that this was the problem Humanity faced in the early 19th century and that beginning in the

1840s with the invention of telegraphy and photography we addressed this problem and for 140 years afterwards we continued to address it and that we have solved the problem in fact in a spectacular fashion and that it is both reactionary and distracting to pretend that we have not solved the problem and wasteful to spend billions of dollars in the 21st century on solving a 19th century problem that we already solved well that's just my answer yours might be different that's fine but the point is that the question needs to be asked and we certainly are entitled

to ask it with a measure of skepticism a couple of years ago I went to buy a Honda Accord the salesman said uh proudly I thought that it had cruise control for which there's an extra charge so I asked him what is the problem to which cruise control is the solution well he said no no one had ever asked him this before but he thought about it for a few seconds and then he said it's the problem of keeping your foot on the gas well I told them that I'd been driving for 35 years and

I'd never found this to be a problem he then said this car has electric windows do you know what I asked him right now and he was ready for me this time he said it's the problem of having to go like this or so I said well look I'm uh I I've never really found this to be a problem but I I'm an academic I I live a sort of sedate life and whatever little exercise I had as well I I bought I bought the uh Accord because you cannot and I brought it with cruise

control and electric windows because you cannot get this car without cruise control and electric windows which is something to think about because there are many people um uh who think that new technology always increases people's options sometimes it does but not always for example if you want a car without cruise control and electric windows but another good example uh more cultural example of when the skepticism of this kind was applied concerns a question raised some years ago as to whether or not our government should subsidize the manufacture of a supersonic jet both the British and

the French had already built ssts and a serious debate ensued in the halls of Congress and elsewhere as to whether or not Americans should have one of our own and so the question was asked it actually was what is the problem to which the supersonic jet is the solution the answer it turned out was that it takes six hours to go from New York to L.A in a 747. with a supersonic jet it can be done in three most Americans I'm happy to say did not think that that was a sufficiently serious problem to Warrant

such a heavy investment besides a lot of Americans asked what would we do with the three hours we saved and their answer was we probably would watch television and so the suggestion was made that we put television sets on the 747 and thereby save billions of dollars now in addition to this another question was asked which I now put forward as my second question after one has answered the question what is the problem to which a particular technology is the solution one must ask whose problem is it in the case of the SST the problem

of getting to LA or London faster than 747s could do it was largely a problem for movie stars rock musicians and corporate Executives hardly a problem that most Americans would regard as worth solving if it would cost them a lot of money but this question whose problem is it needs to be applied to any Technologies most Technologies do solve some problem but the problem may not be everybody's problem or even most people's problem we need to be very careful in determining who will benefit from a technology and who will pay for it they are not

always the same people but let's say that we found a technological solution to a problem that most people do have we now come to the third question it's this suppose we solve this problem and solve it decisively what new problems might be created because we have solved the problem the automobile solves some very important problems for most people but in doing so has poisoned our air has choked our cities with traffic and has contributed towards the destruction of some of the beauty of our natural natural landscape antibiotics have certainly solved significant problems for almost all

people but in doing so have resulted in the weakening of what we call our immune systems television has solved several important problems but in solving them has changed the nature of political discourse has led to a serious decline in literacy and has even made the traditional process of socializing children difficult if not impossible it's doubtful that you can think of any important single technology that did not generate new problems as a result of its having solved an old problem of course it's sometimes very difficult to know what new problems will arise as a result of

a technological solution Benedictine monks invented the mechanical clock in the 13th century in order to be more precise in performing their canonical prayers which they needed to say seven times a day had they known that the mechanical clock would eventually be used by merchants as a means of establishing a standardized workday and then a standardized product that is that the clock would be used as an instrument for making money instead of serving God the monks might have decided that their sundials was quite sufficient had Gutenberg foreseen that his printing press with movable type would lead

to the breakup of the Holy Roman sea he surely would have used his old wine press to make wine and not books well in the 13th century maybe it didn't matter so much if people lack technological vision maybe not even in the 15th century but in a technological Society I don't think we can afford any longer to move into the future with our eyes tightly closed we need to speculate in an open-eyed way about negative possibilities but as I've said it's no easy matter to know what sort of problems and new technology will generate well

anyway it's not sufficient to reflect in a general way on the possible costs in order to give some Focus to our Reflections we have to ask a fourth question which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution this was the question by the way that gave rise to the Luddite movement in England during the years 1811 and 1818. the people we call luddites were skilled manual workers in the Garment industry at the time when mechanization was taking command and the factory system was being put into place they knew perfectly well

what advantages mechanization would bring to most people but they also saw with equal clarity how it would bring ruin to their own ways of life especially to their children who were being employed as virtual slave laborers in factories so they resisted technological change by the simplistic and useless expedient of Smashing to bits industrial machinery which they continued to do until they were imprisoned or killed by the British army now no one knows for sure where the word Luddite came from but the word has come to mean a person who resists technological change in any way

and it's usually used as an insult now why this is so is a bit puzzling because as I said before only a fool doesn't know that new technologies always produce winners and losers and there is nothing irrational about loser resistance now Bill Gates who is of course a winner knows this and because he's no fool his propaganda continuously implies that computer technology can bring harm to no one well that is the way of winners they want losers to be grateful and enthusiastic and especially to be unaware that they are losers let's take School teachers as

an example of losers who are deluded into thinking they are winners there must be some school teachers in the audience listen to this in America well let me just stop for a moment and just tell you a fact which I didn't include here but which haunts me last fall one million one hundred thousand children showed up in the New York City school system there were no seats you hear what I'm saying there were no seats for 91 000 children so they met in the latrines in the bathrooms this is where their classes were held the

chancellor of the New York City Schools is mostly interested in spending a lot of money to wire the classrooms that's all I'm going to say just think about that well I'm a New York is not the only place like this throughout the country we're preparing to spend in the aggregate billions of dollars to why our schools in order to accommodate a computer technology and for reasons that are by no means clear there certainly does not exist any compelling evidence that personal computers or any other manifestation of computer technology can do for children what good well

paid underburdened teachers can do where then is the outcry from teachers they are losers in this deal and serious losers here for example is an announcement of a recent insult to teachers taken from the June 11th 1996 edition of The Washington Post I quote quote Governor Paris glendenning governor of Maryland announced yesterday that the state of Maryland plans to connect every public school to the internet this year part of a 53 million dollar effort to give students greater access to far-flung information via computer just I'm still quoting despite mixed reviews by national analysts who have

studied computer use in schools the plan calls for each of Maryland's 1262 public schools to have at least two computer terminals linked to the internet before winter and for every classroom to have three to five such terminals within five years unquote now Governor clendaning calls this a bold and big initiative and expects tens of millions of additional dollars to be donated by private Enterprise so that the total expenditure will be close this year to 100 million dollars here is the governor's justification and again I quote accessing information is the first vital step in understanding and

ultimately improving the world we live in unquote now let us put aside the fact that at best this is a problematic claim and at worst it is errant nonsense let us also put aside the fact that even if the governor's claim is true American students already have an oversupply of sources of information there are in America seventeen thousand newspapers twelve thousand periodicals 27 000 video outlets for renting tapes 500 million TV sets well over 600 million radios not include including those in automobiles there are 10 000 libraries and forty thousand new book titles published every

year each day in America 41 million photographs are taken now do American students now require an additional 100 million dollar investment to ensure that they become well-informed citizens putting all of that aside will you agree with me that the following hypothetical statement which I've just made up I mean not just now but would be happier news and more rational for both teachers and students this is my quote the state of Maryland intends to spend a hundred million dollars to increase the number of teachers in the state to pay those we have more and to reduce

teaching loads Governor condoning said this is a vital step toward assuring that our students will be given a more attentive wholesome and Creative Education unquote now I should thank most teachers would support such an investment but we hear very little from them on that score in fact many teachers are thrilled by the thought of a hundred million dollar investment in computer terminals Bill Gates loves this form of stupidity here's the fifth question what changes in language are being enforced by new technologies what is being gained and what is being lost by such changes now you

will agree that no matter what New Media come into our lives language will remain at most indispensable medium and it is always a serious matter when new meanings arise and old ones are lost think for example of how the words community and conversation are now employed by those who use the internet the word Community has traditionally referred to those who have different and even opposing interests but who find common ground for the sake of political or social harmony internet communities are strangers to this conception they begin in harmony and make no demands on one's capacity

for negotiation and tolerance which is the essence of how communities are formed and sustained as for conversations two people who are typing messages to each other are not in my opinion having a conversation in that the most significant aspects of face-to-face communication are simply absent now those who come to believe that emailing is conversation are likely to be people who believe that there is no significant difference between speaking one's sadness face to face to a friend who has lost her mother and sending her a Hallmark condolence card think of how television has changed the meaning

of the phrase political debate would Abraham Lincoln or Stephen Douglas recognize such a televised event as a debate when Lincoln and Douglas were going through Illinois in their debates they had more than seven by the way typically Lincoln would speak for three hours Douglas would speak for three hours and then Lincoln would have one hour for rebuttal then when they went to Ottawa Springfield or the next a town then Douglas would speak for three hours Link in for three hours and Douglas would have an hour for a bottle here's a debate in America today Barbara

Walters or some Mistress of ceremony says the question is this is for you President Bush what is the problem in the Middle East and how can it be solved you will have two minutes to answer after which Governor Clinton will have one minute to reply actually I think it's a form of mental illness because uh one would expect wooden one that President Bush or Governor Clinton would object and say how dare you ask such a question and give one of us two minutes to answer and the other one minute to rebut we're running for the

most serious political office perhaps in the world what is wrong with you but of course they don't say this or they might say how dare you ask such a question what kind of people do you think Americans are that they would put up with this well they don't say that either because we know what kind of people we are nonetheless people do say the next day did you see the debate I often imagine what Lincoln or Douglas would if they could come back and they hear us use that word that way think of what's happening

to the word public or the phrase participatory democracy not long ago I reviewed a book called the electronic Republic for the LA Times the author argued that new technologies will make representative democracy obsolete because the technologies will make it possible to have instant plebiscites on every issue in this way voters will directly decide if we should join NAFTA or send troops to Bosnia or impeach the president the Senate and House of Representatives will be largely unnecessary and this the author said is participatory democracy just as it was in Athens in the 15th century BC the

5th Century BC now I have no objection to borrowing borrowing a phrase from an older media environment in order to conceptualize a new development we do it all the time but it has its risks and attention must be paid when we do it to call a train an iron horse as we once did maybe picturesque but it obscures the most significant differences between a train and a horse and buggy to use the term an electronic town hall meeting similarly similarly obscures the differences between an 18th century face-to-face Gathering of citizens and a packaged televised pseudo

event to use the term distance learning to refer to students and a teacher sending email messages to each other may have some value but it obscures the fact that the act of reading a book is the best example of distance learning ever invented because reading not only triumphs over the limitations of space and co-presence but of time as well and as for participatory democracy we would be hard-pressed to find any similarity whatever between Politics as practiced by 5 000 homogeneous well-educated slave holding Athenians and 250 million Americans doing plebiscides every week and it's dangerous to

allow language to lead us to believe otherwise now I'm not saying by the way that citizens ought to be urged to resist language change only that they need to be aware of how it occurs and why and what sort of attitudes the New Uses of language promotes here's the sixth question and you'll recognize that it's related to some of the others but I give it a special status because of its importance the question is this what sort of people and institutions acquire Special Economic and political power because of technological change now this question needs to

be asked because the transformation of a technology into a medium always results in a realignment of Economic and political power and I don't say this is a criticism of anyone but simply as a fact a new medium creates new jobs and makes old ones obsolete a new medium gives prominence to certain kinds of skills and subordinates others Ronald Reagan for example could not have been president were not for television this is a man who rarely spoke precisely and never eloquently and yet he was called the great communicator why because he was Magic on television his

televa is televised image projected a sense of authenticity tradition intimacy and caring and it didn't much matter if citizens agreed with what he said or even understood what he said television gives power to some while it deprives others and this is true of every important medium and this fact has always been understood by intelligent entrepreneurs who see opportunities emerging from the creation of New Media that's why media entrepreneurs are the most radical force in culture I don't know why they they called conservatives maybe because they wear dark suits and great sizes these entrepreneurs are interested

in maximizing the profits of New Media and do not give much thought to large-scale cultural effects America's greatest radicals have been our entrepreneurs Morse Bell Edison Sarnoff Disney these men created the 20th century as Bill Gates and others are creating the 21st now I don't know if much can be done to moderate the cultural changes that media entrepreneurs will enforce but citizens ought to know what is happening and keep an attentive and critical eye on such people Here's the final and seventh question and for it I return to a point I made in my lengthy

prologue the question is this what alternative uses might be made of a technology the one proceeds here by assuming that any medium we have created is not necessarily the only one we might make of a particular technology in America it was not inevitable for example that television should be turned over to commercial Industries as for radio in 1926 Herbert Hoover who was then Secretary of Commerce and two years later president of the United States delivered an address in which he said that it was unthinkable to use radio as a commercial medium it was obvious to

him as it is no longer to many of us that radio was the greatest medium yet invented for providing a general education to the masses well it hasn't turned out that way but the point I wish to make is that how technology is transformed into a particular kind of medium is a complex and even fascinating subject it's a subject filled with politics sociology with the psychology of Good Intentions and of course lots of greed well there are many other questions I could suggest but for now I'm going to stick with these seven what is the

problem to which a technology claims to be the solution whose problem is it what new problems will be created because of solving an old one which people and institutions will be most harmed what changes in language are being promoted what shifts in economic and political power are likely to result and finally What alternative media might be made from a technology now there does remain one of the question I should mention but it's not about media it's about ourselves and I refer to the matter of where and how our citizens will learn to ask relevant questions

about media this said would have to be of course the subject of entire entirely different talk but I would like to conclude by saying that I think this task inevitably must be assigned to our schools our schools have been blindly and I should say irresponsibly indifferent to the study of the ways in which media alter our social relations psychic habits and political processes most School administrators and politicians think that they are responding to technological change by wiring our classrooms what is needed of course is for our students to have their heads unwired and I have

a measure of confidence in saying that that process might begin with these seven questions perhaps I've I've too much Faith as many Americans do in the power of education but I can think of no other Institution that is more available to Preparing our young for what is ahead and if we educate them properly then I think we can face the New Millennium with confidence and some hope thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you thank you thank you very much Dr Postman and he is kindly agreed to answer some questions from the audience but before he does

that I'd like to announce the last event in our lecture series for this Academic Year right here on April 29th we will have the great gender debate between Dr Sarah Weddington and Phyllis schafley and you need to get your tickets early same time same place now if you will if you have a question if you'll raise your hand speak loudly and and make it as short and concise as you can Dr postman has agreed to respond to them yeah way in the back where are you oh okay okay could you speak up could you speak

a little louder foreign well I mean you're talking about me uh uh well I think he was asking uh he was referring to himself but I think he was just being polite and he's saying there are people well like him and me who who don't fit in with the new technological world right laughs okay you could sit down the question is what happens to those of us who don't fit in to the new technological ethos what's going to happen to us I don't know what's going to happen to us uh I I might say that

here's how I handle it um as I said in my talk I I don't consider myself Angie technology but I I do think I'm entitled to pose these sorts of questions even in the personal a personal case I mean I I don't have uh well first of all I think do you know what call waiting is is there anyone here who agrees with me that this is the rudest most disgusting invention well uh there it it's it's conceivable that someone who is in business and finds that it's necessary to have it might think it disgusting

and then have it anyway but in my life since I think it is a disgusting thing I just don't have it uh I don't use email because I have no need for it by the way uh here's one way one handles this when I finished my last book by the way actually I've written 20 books I I have to talk to Tucky about this see uh I finished the last book uh which is called the end of Education I called up my public the editor at knaf and said Jonathan I have good news I finished

the book and he said great send me the disc I said excuse me well what I did what I had to do was actually hire someone to take what I had written to put it on the word processor and send it off so one has to make concessions one has to accommodate that world I did buy the Honda Accord I've never used the cruise control on principle I won't use the cruise control of course with the electric windows you know what can you do so it's a negotiation that you have to engage in with the

world but I've just written a piece for an internal Journal at NYU in which uh the first class I took I've been at NYU for five decades can you believe that my first class was February 1959. so I was there at the 50 60 70 80 90. and in in those days I mean we our Technologies were in quotes primitive students could read they could write and they could talk they wrote pretty much the way I write my books uh some of them use the typewriter but that was not required uh now of course NYU

is a high-tech place so I addressed the question are the kids smarter than they used to be and are the professors smarter than they used to be and my answer is no I mean in fact I think we've even lost a little because professors now spend a lot of time talking about the the Technologies they use to communicate I mean years ago what could you say if you if everyone wrote with a pen and a pad what can you say about this that the my pen has run out of ink how how interesting is that

I I do remember a discussion as to whether a yellow pad or white pad is better to use but it was didn't last long and it was indecisive and that was it all the conversations people had were about ideas now I noticed a lot of professors spend a lot of their time talking about the media they use to communicate so I think there's been a slight loss but my general answer is that you have to negotiate with this new world use those technologies that are in fact useful to you and do not use those Technologies

for which you have no great use so that's how I fight it is probably a losing battle because Americans love you know they lust for technology I don't know why that is but uh de tocqueville says in Democracy in America Americans have a lust for the new that's probably true as a matter of fact I sometimes think suppose the year were 19 07. but we knew what we know now about the automobile and someone said let's make a list of all the good things it will bring and another list of all the bad things be

pretty long list here but also pretty long list here now let's have a plebiscite should we do it our air is going to be poisoned cancer rates are going to go up you know cities are going to be jammed with traffic let's vote I think Americans would say oh let's do it don't don't you think they probably would say let's do it but but I think I think someone would likely have said in 1907 yeah let's do it but is there anything we can do to maximize the advantages and minimize the disadvantages good question in

1907 there would have been plenty we could have done then and maybe in 1927 and 47 in 1997 it's pointless we don't use the automobile it uses us so here's how smart I am make you feel bad about coming to hear me talk I thought television was going to be the last great technology that Americans would be stupid about would accept without asking any questions I mean if someone had said in 1946 to Americans look this is a nice machine here but by 1997 this is going to be the deal the average American kid will

clock five thousand hours in front of the TV set before entering the first grade nineteen thousand hours by High School's end by age 21 we'll have seen 650 000 television commercials American politics will be reduced to a 30-second commercial during campaigns and sound bites the rest of the time I mean if someone had said this what would we have said oh let's do it anyway well I thought well we didn't know in 1946 we were not really responsible but we learned that so I said well that's it now what's happening with the computer the same

blindness no one is asking anything worth asking and we're lined up to spend billions to wire our classrooms why for God's sakes I'm not saying we shouldn't but is there a serious discussion about this so I'm getting overwrought here you think and another question yes sir crazy that what you say yes well I mean uh keep Pace with what uh my uh uh if we're talking about developing uh in our in our young children uh communication competencies then I would say the first order of business besides obviously speech which we really don't have to teach

them because we're genetically programmed to learn that the first item of business would be to make sure they're good readers uh he see here's what I would say to a parent how is it that all the people who invented these new technologies television laser beams computers how is it those people were educated exclusively with this and a paired in a book I mean how did that happen how did those how did those people get so smart that just working with this and a pan in a book they were able to invent this high-tech world now

I'm not um uh I mean I have a son who's an astrophysicist and the Hubble telescope project by the way in 1999 they're sending up some more astronauts you know to mess around up there and my son he's going to give them directions now you want to know something terrifying when you're to think that your son who didn't even know how to tie his shoes till he was like six is giving astronauts directions and out his face anyway uh he tells me that through computer technology they can solve problems in uh in a day and

a half that would have taken months with maybe even longer than that without a computers and I have I'm sure that's true and I have no doubt that the advantages of computer technology for high-level research in the hard sciences and the advantages of computer technology for large-scale corporations and institutions like the IRS and the the Pentagon and General Motors and so on that's a great Advantage there it's not clear to me that a real slick competence in using computer technology is much of an advantage to the average person the case has not been meh I

mean if someone would make the case I I assure you I would accept it but no one has been able to make that case so I I'm not in a hurry in raising children to make sure they're terribly but besides it's not a problem anyway why are we even talking about this 35 million Americans have already learned how to use computers without any help whatsoever from the schools if the schools do absolutely nothing in the next 10 years everyone's going to know how to use computers now suppose I'm right in saying that the question Still

Remains what should we do with kids in school what communication skills would we ought we to promote and and try to cultivate in my own case uh I mean I have three kids and um the main thing we wanted to make sure was that they knew how to read they knew how to write and they knew how to speak and I told them when they asked what they should major in college I said it doesn't matter pick something that you're terribly interested in because you already know how to write read and speak therefore anything you

want to do after that in America be a piece of cake because most people don't read write and speak right so if you want to go to Professional School they'll take you in a jiffy if you want to go to to Corporate America they'll take you even faster so one of them majored in music uh well the astrophysicist you know he majored in physics of course uh but uh and then my daughter is is a teacher she majored in a dramatic literature because she was interested in it but that that would if if anyone asked

me as you did uh well what would be the most important thing so far as helping children cultivate communication skills I would say it's sad in fact I sometimes wonder this is just an aside and you must promise that to tell anyone but I sometimes wonder if there isn't a sort of conspiracy going on this is the conspiracy the people who are going to run everything in America now and in the foreseeable future are those people who read write and speak those are the people who get into Yale and Princeton and Harvard by demonstrating not

that they have computer skills but that they can read write and speak the rest of the Hoy polloi is going to be messing around with film I mean it's not just compute the multimedia the Great unwashed are going to be experts in the multimedia meanwhile the guys and gals running everything will be those who have demonstrated a command over language that's my best answer this yes sir good good are you buying these books well I mean you you forever I I can't answer this question but I but but the question has embedded in it something

that I feel very strongly about it is this that what is distracting us from solving some of the problems that you've mentioned is a kind of world view promoted especially now by computer technology that the reason the main reason we have problems in the world is that we have insufficient information if only we could get more information easier to access and get it faster than we could solve this problem or any of the others you mentioned and I think this is a a an awesome conceit and a a terrible misjudgment look if there are children

starving any place it is not because we have insufficient information if there's crime rampant in the streets in New York and Detroit and Chicago it is not because we have insufficient information if the ozone layer is being depleted and the rainforest is disappearing it's not because we have insufficient information and if you can't get along with your own relatives it's not because you have insufficient information but we have come to believe that that is the source of all the misery and pain in the world if only we had more information and I think that is

a complete distraction this is what Bill Gates wants us to believe and apparently Governor Clendening of Maryland and for all I know most teachers and administrators if only we had more of if we could wire every classroom to the internet that's it that's how we'll get informed citizens if only we could get this information super highway so we could have 500 stations then that's it that's how we'll do it well my view as expressed in the talk is that this is a very reactionary point of view we have solved this problem already how to get

more information to more people fast and in diverse forms we solved it congratulations it was great but we created another problem the other problem is information glut information meaninglessness information in coherence we are flooded in information we are drowning in information and talk to an educator and say well what do we have to do in schools I know the problem they don't have enough information so we've got a new set of problems here in education in the social life how do we learn or what do we have to know to learn what to do in

a culture that is saturated with information this never happened before This truly has never happened before because prior to the the early 19th century every culture suffered from information scarcity and it was beginning in the 1840s by the way at NYU professor Samuel Finley Brees Morse uh who's associated with the invention of the telegraph was a professor at NYU we didn't give him tenure no there wasn't such a thing that is uh but beginning in in the early 19th century Humanity addressed this problem how to get more information to more people fast and in diverse

forms in the 1840s a message could travel only as fast as a human being could which was 35 miles an hour roughly on a on a train so we address how do we overcome this problem and then from the 1840s right through into this Century by the way they were far more technological changes in the 19th century than they've been in the 20th I mean I don't know if you you know about the 19th century it's really interesting but beginning then and right into our own century we address this problem how how can we overcome

information scarcity and we've done it in doing it we created another problem what to do with all the information what does it mean what is it what are we going to do with it uh so no one's addressing that problem that's a really serious problem but we're not addressing it because everyone is obsessed with this idiotic idea that Governor condensing had if only if we wired Maryland's classrooms this is the way to create informed citizens we have every classroom connected to the internet why there are no libraries in the state they're no there are no

newspapers uh everyone's flooded with information so we've got to get off the track I think if we said no this is not our problem we don't really need more uh access to it but we have enough now let's calm down and see what other problems we have I mean Clinton really when he gave his State of the Union Address that you well maybe you missed it because was that the O.J Simpson thing that Trump so you may have missed it but here's the president of the United States saying listen to this this is the educational

goal for the 21st century this is his goal that every classroom be connected to the internet the man should be impeached just for that that that's uh now one one would think one would think that the man would say well this will be a means to something fair enough let's wire every classroom it's a means to what what is it what is the end well in the culture we live in technological innovation does not need to be justified does not need to be explained it is an end in itself because most of us believe that

technological innovation and human progress are exactly the same thing which of course is not so and um so I mean we have some serious problems however I will end Ed because I know you're moving around there I could sit uh so I I will end by saying this uh uh uh if I it's obvious that one correctly labels me as a Critic of Technology of course uh but I'm not a Luddite and I do what I do and say what I say because most of my fellow countrymen and women are desperately in love with technology

and I think this is a mistake and so I think the culture needs people who point out that their love is misplaced because you know when you're desperately in love with someone it's almost impossible to see what their failings are isn't that usually the case you need someone who's a little has a little distance from it and said you know haven't you noticed this guy kicks you every time he comes on a date you say yes but my he says he loves me you know and so you need someone who says look technology is as

much problematic for a culture as it is glorious and we have to give some attention to the problematic part of it and I'll end by saying that I believe it or not I'm really quite optimistic um about all this uh when I was being introduced as Neil Simon you'll remember uh it Tucky said that read something that I wrote where it said uh I don't know 15 years ago you really couldn't draw a crowd for a talk about this subject you could get a bigger crowd if the lecture was on how to improve your backhand

in tennis than on this subject all of that has changed and I think that Americans are beginning to ask uh some of the questions that I spoke of I mean they're wondering are the kids watching too much television what the hell is television done to them even asking questions about Sesame Street which I think has been a national catastrophe and always and I I any book I ever write if I could find an occasion to say something snotty about Sesame Street I love it but I mean Americans are asking questions about this what what is

it done to our family life as social relations at political ideas they're beginning to ask questions about computer technology as well so I I'm very encouraged by this and I think we're there's so much vitality and intelligence in American culture that um I I I'm truly optimistic about the possibility of our giving some order and reason to the way we make use of the Technologies the the people in Europe you know they look across the Atlantic to see how we're doing and up until very recently they thought America was the largest open-air insane asylum in

the world but now their views are quite different because Americans are getting together and actually having a sensible conversations about this anyway thank you very much I enjoyed every minute [Applause] Dr Postman will be assigning copies of his books in the lobby in just a few minutes and they're for sale out there and we thank you very much for coming or something