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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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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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When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
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The written word endures, the spoken word disappears
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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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...there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.
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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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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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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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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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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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