Five things we need to know about technological change

Neil Postman writes about the social consequences of technology on our lives. He borrows from the greatest thinkers and writers of Western culture to support five ideas in a speech he delivered in 1998. His first idea is that “all technological change is a trade-off" or a Faustian bargain, if you will. There is a price to be paid for every new technological advance. Ask not, Postman cautions, what will this new technology do, but what will it undo? What will we lose as a result and is it worth it?

Postman goes on to make four more related observations about technological change and its affects on mankind weaving in historical references to support his well-taken points.This reflective article is especially interesting in light of the economic crisis of 2008. Postman seems to have predicted the current Wall Street mess. He says explicitly that capitalists need to be watched carefully and disciplined when they get too greedy. So-called conservatives “talk of family, marriage, piety and honor but if allowed to exploit new technology to its fullest economic potential, they may undo the institutions that make such ideas possible.” (p.6) Wow—Postman’s observations seem particularly astute ten years after he made this speech to a group of technology professionals.