A Quote by Neil Postman

Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.

Neil Postman

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Always Anyone Away Bargain Change Community Creates Destroyed Destroys Equal Example Excellent History Idea Individuality Integration Invention Knows Measure Medieval Modern More Never New New Technology One-Sided Press Printing Printing Press Sense Social Sometimes Studied Technological Technological Change Technology Than The History Of

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Neil Postman
American - Author
March 8, 1931 - October 5, 2003

It is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in which technology giveth and technology taketh away.

Neil Postman

Technological civilizations don't last long. You're all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.

Jack McDevitt

Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.

Neil Postman

Technology giveth and technology taketh away.

Cory Doctorow

Introducing a technology is not a neutral act--it is profoundly revolutionary. If you present a new technology to the world you are effectively legislating a change in the way we all live. You are changing society, not some vague democratic process. The individuals who are driven to use that technology by the disparities of wealth and power it creates do not have a real choice in the matter. So the idea that we are giving people more freedom by developing technologies and then simply making them available is a dangerous illusion.

Karl Schroeder

The only weapon we have to oppose the bad effects of technology is technology itself. There is no other. We can't retreat into a nontechnological Eden which never existed...It is only by the rational use of technology to control and guide what technology is doing that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desireable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not appalling to imagine.

C.P. Snow

Nothing could be more misleading than the idea that computer technology introduced the age of information. The printing press began that age, and we have not been free of it since.

Neil Postman

Technology for me is discover, learn, evolve and implement. It combines 3Ss- speed, simplicity and service. Technology is fast, technology is simple and technology is a brilliant way to serve people. It is also a great teacher. The more we learn about technology and the more we learn through technology, the better it is.

Narendra Modi

Quite often startups were first out of the gate with a sustaining technology. But somehow the leaders got the technology and stayed atop their industries. Sometimes they acquired the startup; sometimes they just developed the technology as a follower and used their muscle and mass to win. But they always won.

Clayton Christensen

Technology no longer consists just of hardware or software or even services, but of communities. Increasingly, community is a part of technology, a driver of technology, and an emergent effect of technology.

Howard Rheingold

But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology 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

People always think of technology as something having silicon in it. But a pencil is technology. Any language is technology. Technology is a tool we use to accomplish a particular task and when one talks about appropriate technology in developing countries, appropriate may mean anything from fire to solar electricity.

Mae Jemison

Similar to computer technology in the '60s, 3-D printing is a universal technology that has the potential to revolutionize our life by enabling individuals to design and manufacture things.

Hod Lipson

Both instruments are processors of information. Both appeared when nothing quite like them had existed before, and both began to make their effects felt immediately (a situation that isn't invariable with new technology). Both devices were less the result of a single breakthrough than of an evolving set of technologies. Like the computer, the printing press had no one certain inventor; it was a technology whose time had come.

Pamela McCorduck

So many people for so many years have promoted technology as the answer to everything. The economy wasn't growing: technology. Poor people: technology. Illness: technology. As if, somehow, technology in and of itself would be a solution. Yet machine values are not always human values.

Ellen Ullman

I've always been interested with the idea of technology and the way technology affects our ability to communicate - our ability to have a rewarding experience with technology versus a kind of dehumanizing experience with technology.

Marco Brambilla

A Quote by Neil Postman

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