🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“What we need to consider is not just how a technology works, but how it works on us and on our society. Each technology has an inherent bias. It has within its physical form a predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a technology is entirely neutral.”

~ Neil Postman

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Greetings!

As promised, this week I am introducing the first Gadfly Academy book study!

I was recently discussing the future of Gadfly Academy with my friend Isabella. While there are many other cultural critics that I could introduce, I feel as though if I am going to practice what I preach, I need to begin to go more deeply into one writer, and one text.

The million dollar question has always been: which writer and which text do I begin with? While there are strong arguments for a variety of writers and texts, I’ve decided to begin with Neil Postman, and his most famous book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. This will most likely be followed by his book, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. I love both of these books (and am always hard-pressed to choose which of the two is "more important"), and my choice to begin with Amusing Ourselves to Death is largely chronological: we’ll read these two seminal books in the order in which they were written. As regards why I’m beginning with books by Neil Postman, there are a number of reasons…

1) As the person who coined the term “media ecology,” Postman has probably done more than any other modern thinker in offering a legacy around which an intellectual movement addressing the topics we have been addressing has taken place. This is particularly true as the central organization promoting the study of these topics, The Media Ecology Association, was founded by five of Postman’s students.

2) Amusing Ourselves to Death is probably the most popular book in the genre, and as such has had a comparatively large effect on culture.

3) Finally, Postman is one of the clearest thinkers and writers in this genre, and has a gift for cutting through the noise and finding the essence of the problem.

At the end of the day, there is no “right” answer to the question of which text to begin with. Mostly, I want to inspire you with texts that are full of helpful insights into the world in which we find ourselves, and Postman does this better than most.

Another great reason to begin with Postman is that there are many folk still living who knew Postman personally. As I mentioned previously, I recently had the good fortune of sitting down for a conversation with two of his students, Professor Lance Strate and Professor Paul Levinson of Fordham University. You can find my interview with Lance Strate on the Gadfly Academy YouTube channel.

Ok…that’s it for today! Please stay tuned for more by following me on X and on other platforms, and I will see you again next week!

Warmly,

Herman

PS: Do you know of someone who might be interested in joining our book study? If so, please forward this email on to them!