April14_2025

Twitter / Bluesky / Reddit / meme streaming. Every 2 hours... different topics, no sense of "front page news" importance. Twitter-thinking.

“a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992

“It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985. Page 111. Longer version: Specific/Postman_1985_Howdy_Doody.md

 

1985:
“But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology [Reddit / Bluesky] comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, year 1985. page 157.

 

“a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992

 

Recommended 6 minute video

Amusing Ourselves to Death 1985 book, modern introduction on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETUGwC9jXCM

 

“Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives. We see this, of course, in the conflict concerning creation science. Some educators representing, as they think, the conscience of science act much like those legislators who in 1925 prohibited by law the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. In that case, anti-evolutionists were fearful that a scientific idea would undermine religious belief. Today, pro-evolutionists are fearful that a religious idea will undermine scientific belief. The former had insufficient confidence in religion; the latter insufficient confidence in science. The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.” ― Neil Postman, The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School. September 1995

 

 

Fragmented mindsets

mind sets
TV sets

• “In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different order from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information — misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information — information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Year 1985. Page 107.

 

“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Year 1985. Page 156. Nonfiction book.

 

“For in the end, he was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in 'Brave New World' was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Year 1985. New York University (NYU). Page 163.

• SEE_ALSO Quoted by Stephen Bertman in year 1998. Hyperculture: The Human Cost of Speed. Page 142

 

ToDo: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/quotes/Neil_Postman

• "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." - Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk : How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to do About It. year 1976, p. 104

NEW_OPERA_NAME #KeyToAll
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• "There is a difference between rape and seduction, technology can rape a culture or be forced to seduce it." - Neil Postman. "The Conservative Outlook", in Conscientious Objections : Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education. year 1988

NEW_OPERA_NAME #TechnologyCanRape
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