The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront – spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future … Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better – best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense.
Predictor: Postman, Neil
Prediction, in context:In an Oct. 11, 1990, speech to the German Informatics Society in Stuttgart, social commentator and author Neil Postman says: ”The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane. The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking. It cannot provide a means of understanding why we are here or why we fight each other or why decency eludes us so often, especially when we need it the most. The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront – spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future. Does one blame the computer for this? Of course not. It is, after all, only a machine. But it is presented to us, with trumpets blaring, as at this conference, as a technological messiah. Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better – best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it. I said a moment ago that computers are not to blame for this. And that is true, at least in the sense that we do not blame an elephant for its huge appetite or a stone for being hard or a cloud for hiding the sun. That is their nature, and we expect nothing different from them. But the computer has a nature, as well. True, it is only a machine but a machine designed to manipulate and generate information. That is what computers do, and therefore they have an agenda and an unmistakable message.”
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: Information Overload
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: Anderson, Janna Quitney