Quote

My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content - in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.

Neil Postman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Use
Argument
Mediums
Favoring
Form
Structure
Limited
Demanding
Truth
Telling
Definitions
Phrase
Certain
Changes
Content
Encouraging
Doe
Intelligence
Intellect
Discourse
Kind
Creating
Majors
Uses
Saying
Major
Phrases
Wisdom
Forms
Medium

More quotes by Neil Postman

Image
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
Neil Postman
Image
Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.
Neil Postman
Image
There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.
Neil Postman
Image
Printing links the present with forever. It carries personal identity into realms unknown.
Neil Postman
Image
At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
Neil Postman
Image
An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
Neil Postman
Image
We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?
Neil Postman
Image
The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on a page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.
Neil Postman
Image
'The scientific method,' Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, 'is nothing but the normal working of the human mind.' That is to say, when the mind is working that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes.
Neil Postman
Image
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.
Neil Postman
Image
The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.
Neil Postman
Image
Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.
Neil Postman
Image
Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.
Neil Postman
Image
The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.
Neil Postman
Image
As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
Neil Postman
Image
. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.
Neil Postman
Image
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.
Neil Postman
Image
The spectacle we find in true religions has as its purpose enchantment, not entertainment. The distinction is critical. By endowing things with magic, enchantment is a means through which we may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which we distance ourselves from it.
Neil Postman
Image
Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
Neil Postman
Image
The written word endures, the spoken word disappears
Neil Postman