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.
Predictor: Postman, Neil
Prediction, in context:In an Oct. 11, 1990, speech to the German Informatics Society in Stutgart, social commentator and author Neil Postman says: ”I believe I know something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more about what technologies undo in a culture. In fact, I might say, at the start, that what a technology undoes is a subject that computer experts apparently know very little about … What seems to be lacking among computer experts is a sense of technological modesty. After all, 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.”
Biography:Neil Postman was a professor at NYU and prolific writer and speaker on the negative impacts of technology and the media on society. He wrote the book “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” (1992). (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: October 11, 1990
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Speech to the German Informatics Society
Title, headline, chapter name: Informing Ourselves to Death
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/informing.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Sturmfelz, Matt