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Neil Postman states, "if in biology a 'medium' is something in which a bacterial culture grows (as in a Petri dish), in media ecology, the medium is 'a technology within which a [human] culture grows.'" [5] [6] [7] In other words, "Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling ...
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology is a book by Neil Postman published in 1992 that describes the development and characteristics of a "technopoly". He defines a technopoly as a society in which technology is deified, meaning “the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology”.
Rather than acknowledging that a society or culture interacts with and even shapes the technologies that are used, a technological determinist view holds that "the uses made of technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself, that is, that its functions follow from its form" (Neil Postman).
Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers, mobile devices, and cruise control in cars, and was critical of uses of technology, such as personal computers in school. [1]
The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming ...
Law of increasing the degree of ideality of the system The ideality of a system is a qualitative ratio between all desirable benefits of the system and its cost or other harmful effects. When trying to decide how to improve a given invention, one naturally would attempt to increase ideality, either to increase beneficial features or else to ...
An important problem concerning technology assessment is the so-called Collingridge dilemma: on the one hand, impacts of new technologies cannot be easily predicted until the technology is extensively developed and widely used; on the other hand, control or change of a technology is difficult as soon as it is widely used. It emphasizes on the ...
In Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman frames the information-action ratio in the context of the telegraph's invention. Prior to the telegraph, Postman says people received information relevant to their lives, creating a high correlation between information and action: "The information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had ...