Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.
Interpretation
Technological advancements can lead to unexpected outcomes that affect various stakeholders differently.
This quote by Neil Postman highlights the unpredictable nature of technological progress, emphasizing that while innovations may appear beneficial, they can also bring about unintended consequences that might harm certain individuals or groups. The quote serves as a reminder of the complexities involved in technological change, where outcomes are not always evident from the outset, and it can be challenging to discern the ultimate winners and losers in this context.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of social media on society, one might say, 'As Neil Postman once noted, technology always has unforeseen consequences.'
Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself.
Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. [β¦] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway.
The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.
While nations protect their physical borders, tech platforms leave digital borders wide open.
There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
There is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.
I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.
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