Michelle O. cops Jackie O.’s style? Maybe. I submit: Lady Bird Johnson, Bess Truman.
I’ve had a series of conversations lately after which I’ve felt completely out of step with my times. I don’t like Facebook. I do have a profile, and I appreciate it in so far as it’s an awfully good replacement for the phone book, but I view it as a professional and thus economic necessity. I generally don’t log on until politeness compels me to. I also don’t much care for Twitter, unless it’s used in an interesting way that is a layer removed from the merely personal. I don’t want to know what my friends are thinking at any given moment, I don’t want or expect them to care what I’m doing with my day, and if they did profess a desire to receive 7 updates from me in a 24-hour period, I would scowl and try to convince them that—no, in fact they don’t.
So I may be a crank or a contrarian or simply a private person (though, come to think of it, that’s a contrarian position itself these days). I’m no Luddite and to support this statement I’ll toss in a line here about how I looooove my 3G iPhone with its throbbing blue ball that tells me I’m going the wrong direction on I-65.
But I do think that many people are too eager to Twit, to bend to pressure to Twit, or exult the uses of Facebook while simultaneously batting away the idea that there may be a downside.
So in honor of techno-agnostics everywhere, here’s Neil Postman on the PBS NewsHour (ye olde MacNeil Lehrer Newshour to us older folk) in 1995, promoting his book Technopoly and discussing what he sees as the necessary questions to ask whenever presented with a new technology. Emphases (in bold) mine:
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What images come to your mind when you, when you think about what our lives will be like in cyberspace?
NEIL POSTMAN: Well, the, the worst images are of people who are overloaded with information which they don’t know what to do with, have no sense of what is relevant and what is irrelevant, people who become information junkies.CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean? How do you mean that?
NEIL POSTMAN: Well, the problem in the 19th century with information was that we lived in a culture of information scarcity and so humanity addressed that problem beginning with photography and telegraphy and the–in the 1840s. We tried to solve the problem of overcoming the limitations of space, time, and form. And for about a hundred years, we worked on this problem, and we solved it in a spectacular way. And now, by solving that problem, we created a new problem, that people have never experienced before, information glut, information meaninglessness, information incoherence. I mean, if there are children starving in Somalia or any other place, it’s not because of insufficient information. And if crime is rampant in the streets in New York and Detroit and Chicago or wherever, it’s not because of insufficient information. And if people are getting divorced and mistreating their children and their sexism and racism are blights on our social life, none of that has anything to do with inadequate information. Now, along comes cyberspace and the information superhighway, and everyone seems to have the idea that, ah, here we can do it; if only we can have more access to more information faster and in more diverse forms at long last, we’ll be able to solve these problems. And I don’t think it has anything to do with it.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Do you believe that this–that the fact that people are more connected globally will lead to a greater degree of homogenization of the global society?
NEIL POSTMAN: Here’s the puzzle about that, Charlayne. When everyone was–when McLuhan talked about the world becoming a global village and, and when people ask, as you did, about how connections can be made, everyone seemed to think that the world would become in, in some good sense more homogenous. But we seem to be experiencing the opposite. I mean, all over the world, we see a kind of reversion to tribalism. People are going back to their tribal roots in order to find a sense of identity. I mean, we see it in Russia, in Yugoslavia, in Canada, in the United States, I mean, in our own country. Why is that every group now not only is more aware of its own grievances but seems to want its own education? You know, we want an Afro-centric curriculum and a Korean-centric curriculum, and a Greek-centered curriculum. What is it about all this globalization of communication that is making people return to more–to smaller units of identity? It’s a puzzlement.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, what do you think the people, society should be doing to try and anticipate these negatives and be able to do something about them?
NEIL POSTMAN: I think they should–everyone should be sensitive to certain questions. For example, when a new–confronted with a new technology, whether it’s a cellular phone or high definition television or cyberspace or Internet, the question–one question should be: What is the problem to which this technology is a solution? And the second question would be: Whose problem is it actually? And the third question would be: If there is a legitimate problem here that is solved by the technology, what other problems will be created by my using this technology? About six months ago, I bought a new Honda Accord, and the salesman told me that it had cruise control. And I asked him, “What is the problem to which cruise control is the solution?” By the way, there’s an extra charge for cruise control. And he said no one had ever asked him that before but then he said, “Well, it’s the problem of keeping your foot on the gas.” And I said, “Well, I’ve been driving for 35 years. I’ve never found that to be a problem.” I mean, am I using this technology, or is it using me, because in a technological culture, it is very easy to be swept up in the enthusiasm for technology, and of course, all the technophiles around, all the people who adore technology and are promoting it everywhere you turn.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Neil Postman, thank you for all of your cautions.
He actually has three more. Questions, that is:
Which people and what institutions will be most seriously harmed by this new technology?
What changes in language are being forced by these new technologies?
What sort of people and institutions gain special economic and political power from this new technology?
