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Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.

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
Destroyed
Design
Modern
Community
Fostered
Idea
Typography
Sense
Medieval
Ideas
Integration
Individuality

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. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.
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Public schooling does not serve a public it creates a pubic.
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Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.
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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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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.
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By itself photography cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract, it does not speak of Man, only of a man not of Tree, only a tree.
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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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If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.
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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.
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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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The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.
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When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk culture-death is a clear possibility.
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When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
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I am not a Luddite. I am suspicious of technology. I am perfectly aware of its benefits, but I also try to pay attention to some of the negative effects.
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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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