Postman, Neil (1931–2003)

Neil Postman was an educator, media theorist, and social critic who for many years taught communication arts and sciences at New York University. The author or coauthor of more than 20 books, Postman made important contributions to media studies, the critical analysis of technology, and the philosophy of education.

Writing from a perspective indebted to the works of such figures as Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis, Postman examined the ways in which both patterns of thought and forms of social organization are shaped by communications media. Throughout his works, Postman emphasized the nonneutrality of media, that is, the fact that the form in which information is transmitted entails certain cognitive biases. Postman also consistently stressed the ecological character of media change: Introduction of a significant new information medium into a given culture inevitably generates a new culture.

Postman articulated many of his basic views on media, along with his enduring concern with language, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, a lively critique of television that would become his most influential work. In this text, Postman argued that television, as a medium that must express ideas primarily through alluring visual imagery, reduces politics, news, history, and the rest to mere entertainment. The upshot of this development in the United States, he maintained, is a trivialization of public discourse.

Postman also used his ideas on media, television, and language to develop his provocative thesis on what he termed the disappearance of childhood. Postman claimed that childhood is essentially a social artifact. Its origin was closely linked to the printing press and the growth of literacy, which made possible the segregation of groups into children and adults. Television, however, tends to eliminate the divide between childhood and adulthood, since it is a largely nonlinguistic medium that offers a kind of undifferentiated access rather than segregating audiences according to age or level of development.

In addition to his writings on media, Postman also produced acute critical analyses of technology, drawing attention to its often unperceived effects on thought and culture. He was particularly critical of technopoly, or the deification of technology, as a result of which social institutions and practices have surrendered their sovereignty to technology.

Education is the central topic in a number of Postman's books and a concern that appears throughout his writings. Rejecting the growing emphasis on economic utility, training for consumership, and faith in technology that characterize education today, Postman held that the purpose of education is to forge a coherent, unified culture out of the diversity within American society. This was, he claimed, the aim that had inspired American education in the early 20th century and it was also the goal that he proposed for education in the future.