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The written word endures, the spoken word disappears

Neil Postman

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Neil Postman
Age: 72 †
Born: 1931
Born: March 8
Died: 2003
Died: October 5
Author
Communication Scholar
Essayist
Journalist
Media Critic
Pedagogue
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Endure
Written
Word
Endures
Disappears
Spoken
Disappear

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People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
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We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.
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A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.
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Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
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Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.
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It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter.
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The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.
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The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
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We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?
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Education Research: This is a process whereby serious educators discover knowledge that is well known to everybody, and has been for several centuries. Its principal characteristic is that no one pays any attention to it.
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The idea of taking what people call the 'entertainment culture' as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.
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Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose.
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An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
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Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.
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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 comercials.
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A metaphor is not an ornament. It is an organ of perception. Through metaphors, we see the world as one thing or another.
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At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
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[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)
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Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.
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The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are false, but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false.
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