Neil Postman

American writer and academic (1931-2003)

Person · Open Library

Born: 8 March 1931
Died: 5 October 2003
Works: 53

Top works

Teaching as a subversive activity
The soft revolution
Prentice Hall Literature
Technopoly
The language of discovery

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United States
Active from: 1931-03-08
Active to: 2003-10-05

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 241
Total plays: 1,831

Neil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Postman">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Neil Postman

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

A method for registration of 3-D shapes
· 1992 · cited 13,940x
Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy
· 2013 · cited 13,135x
Mixed effects models and extensions in ecology with R
· 2009 · cited 12,598x
The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence
· 2020 · cited 11,279x
Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017
· 2018 · cited 10,815x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.”
“The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are "false", but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false.”
“There is a difference between rape and seduction, technology can rape a culture or be forced to seduce it.”
“Someone needs to mention what may be lost. Of course, one of the problems is that what I would judge to be a negative consequence, someone else might see as a positive consequence. For example, telephones in automobiles seem to me a very bad idea. So does spending a lot of hours "communicating" on the Internet when one could use that time reading Cervantes' Don Quixote.”
“Reflect on these questions — and others that these can generate. Please do not merely react to them.”
“What can be called "consciousness of the process of abstraction." That is, consciousness of the fact that out of a virtually infinite universe of possible things to pay attention to, we abstract only certain portions, and those portions turn out to be the ones for which we have verbal labels and categories. What we abstract, i.e., "see," and how we abstract it, or see it, or see it or think about it, is for all practical purposes inseparable from how we talk about it.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born: ( 1931-03-08 ) March 8, 1931, New York City, U.S.
Died: October 5, 2003 (2003-10-05) (aged 72), New York City, U.S.
Occupation: Writer, professor
Education: State University of New York at Fredonia , Columbia University
Period: 1959–2003
Subjects: Media ecology Media criticism cultural criticism education
Spouse: Shelley Ross
Children: 3, including Marc

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Show 3 more facts

date of death: 2003-10-05
date of birth: 1931-03-08
name in native language: Neil Postman

Sources (7)

via Wikidata · CC0

~10 min read

Article

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 – October 5, 2003) was an American author, educator, media theorist, and cultural critic who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers and mobile devices, and was critical of the use of personal computers in schools. He is best known for 20 books about technology and education, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1970), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).

Early life and education