Neil Postmans Arguments on Societys Losses Brought on by...

Neil Postman, writer, educator, critic and communications theorist, has written many books, in addition to his recent book Technopoly. He is one of Americas biggest and most visible cultural critics, who attempts to analyze culture and history in terms of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it seems more important to consider what society loses from new technology than what it gains. To illustrate this, Postman uses the Egyptian mythology called The Judgment of Thamus, which attempts to explain how the development of writing in Egyptian civilization decreases the amount of knowledge and wisdom in the society. He traces the roots of technology to show how technology impacts the moral and intellectual attitude of people. Postman seems to criticize societies with high technologies, yet he seems naive to the benefits technology has given society. Postman is a man who is caught in a changing world of technology who can be considered fairly conservative in his views regarding technology. His lucid writing style stimulates thoughts on issues in todays technological society; however because of his moral interpretations and historical revisions, his ethos is arguable. For every good insight he makes, he skips another mark completely. Postman divides history into three types. He begins his argument with discussion of tool-using cultures. In these cultures, technology has an ideological bias to action that is not thought about by users. He says that this