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

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Printing links the present with forever. It carries personal identity into realms unknown.
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When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
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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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As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
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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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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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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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The problem in the 19th century with information was that we lived in a culture of information scarcity, and so humanity addressed that problem beginning with photography and telegraphy and the - in the 1840s. We tried to solve the problem of overcoming the limitations of space, time, and form.
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