25b8cdf6-dd5f-4e15-82ed-11a167dbaa78 1.3 KB

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