Erudite Postman is no Luddite

This article submitted by Peter Barry on 6/22/99.

Topic:

Erudite Postman is no Luddite

Thoughts:

I have read both Amusing Ourselves to Death [see also Roger Water's homåge to it-Amused to Death] and Technopoly. The man asks us to be careful, not to destroy the machines. But while we're at it, everyone here would get a kick out of E.M. Forster's grim novella "The Machine Stops". Published in 1928.

The most interesting part of Postman's Technopoly, I thought, was the part about management techniques as technology, or, in other words, implicit culture as technology. He covered the growth of bureaucracy [sp] to the point that some bureacracies must be in place to manage other larger ones. Things get done, but responsibility is parced down to nothing. RE: the Challenger debacle.

Postman is a scholar of the highest order who doesn't have to write opaque and shrill nonsense so to obfuscate a lack of content. I'll read more of his work. Much of Postman's stuff about media does seem to be a re-reading of McCluhan.


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