“Five Ideas to Know about Technological Change” by Neil Postman cautions the reader that the advance of technology can be dangerous and has been proven to be detrimental in some cases. Neil Postman states there are five ideas to keep in mind as more technology is developed. The first idea is technology will always have a price which shall be paid, such as automobiles creating pollution. The second idea is some people will benefit from technology while others will suffer from it. The third idea is how there will be people who will have a bias towards the values of technology. The fourth idea is technological change is ecological, meaning it will change many different aspects of life, not just add another aspect to it. The fifth idea is technology may become mythic and people will be unable to think of a way to change it, letting it control us. Neil Postman says we need to make it so we use technology instead of being used by it.
I had various reactions to each of these ideas. For the first two ideas, I already knew that they were right. There is some worry of technology rendering various lines of work obsolete. The third idea was one I had to sit down for a while to think about. I think there is some truth in the third idea, but I don’t agree with some aspects of the third idea. For the fourth idea, I was somewhat surprised, yet I felt I should have known this would be the case. Technology does interact with other aspects of life and change them. Technology is not something that was just added and everything kept on going the way it was before. It changed the way things were done. The fifth idea was quite interesting to think about and there is some truth to how people can view technology as a part of nature and something which can not be changed. Overall, I think this article was an enlightening experience.
Hi Abraham,
I also had to really sit and think about the third idea. At first I agreed with Postman, but reading your comment I had to sit and think about it again. It’s funny, in arguing that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” Postman is kind of doing the same thing as those he’s criticizing. Certain fields such as digital humanities, show that there are technical minds who do not only value facts and information.
postman fourth idea is definitely an eye opener for me. The reason for it being eye opening is because of how true it is. When there is technological change it does effect every aspect of life and not only specific areas. Things change and really don’t go back to how things were before.
Hey Abraham,
I really liked you described the first two ideas as worrisome because some line of work would be obsolete due to new technologies evolving such as AI in the last year.