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- author: Neil Postman
- content: "Every technology has a prejudice. Like language itself, it predisposes us\
- \ to favor and value certain perspectives and accomplishments. In a culture without\
- \ writing, human memory is of the greatest importance, as are the proverbs, sayings\
- \ and songs which contain the accumulated oral wisdom of centuries. That is why\
- \ Solomon was thought to be the wisest of men. In Kings I we are told he knew 3,000\
- \ proverbs. But in a culture with writing, such feats of memory are considered a\
- \ waste of time, and proverbs are merely irrelevant fancies. The writing person\
- \ favors logical organization and systematic analysis, not proverbs. The telegraphic\
- \ person values speed, not introspection. The television person values immediacy,\
- \ not history...\r\n\r\nEvery technology has a philosophy which is given expression\
- \ in how the technology makes people use their minds, in what it makes us do with\
- \ our bodies, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies,\
- \ in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards. This idea\
- \ is the sum and substance of what the great Catholic prophet, Marshall McLuhan\
- \ meant when he coined the famous sentence, \u201CThe medium is the message.\u201D"
- id: 25b8cdf6-dd5f-4e15-82ed-11a167dbaa78
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