Neil Postman

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Neil Postman (born March 8, 1931 in New York ; † October 5, 2003 ibid) was an American media scholar , especially a critic of the television medium and a well-known non-fiction author in the 1980s .

Life and message

Postman was since 1959 professor of communication science and "media ecology", in which mass media are viewed as a systemic environment, at New York University . The media ecology he describes postulates that when a new medium emerges, social change is based on systemic interactions that have far more than just additive effects (old world plus new medium).

He started his career as a primary school teacher. In 1976 he designed a television series for CBS in which he imparted knowledge to students. In 1985, Postman opened the Frankfurt Book Fair with a speech entitled “We amuse ourselves to death”. For his book of the same name, Postman received the Orwell Award in 1986 for outstanding contributions to the critical analysis of public discourse .

He understood media as a form in which information is conveyed; as a kind of substitute language that translates content in a very specific way. With regard to the use of technical devices, one medium is, on the one hand, the manner in which this device is used and, on the other hand, the social and intellectual environment that is created when the device is used.

He advocated the thesis that television jeopardizes the judgment of the citizens and that the compulsion to use images leads to an emptying of the content of politics and culture. He coined the term “ infotainment ” for this . In this context, Postman lamented the infantilization of society. The title of his major work ( We're having fun to death ) shows that he sees American society as being threatened from within by a lack of seriousness in all possible areas of public life. Postman reinforced this impression in 1992 when he gave an essay the title: We inform ourselves to death . The “littering” of information in the information age increases people's disorientation so much that society suffers from “cultural AIDS ”. It should be noted that in 1992 AIDS patients usually died quickly. In 2018, Bernhard Pörksen attested Postman a kind of anticipation of the fake news debates of the 2010s by predicting that truth could be drowned in a "sea of ​​trivialities".

In his argument, the mode of action of the television images initially played an important role. He assumed that they only provoked aesthetic reactions and that television suppressed the emergence of ideas in order to meet the standards of show business. Thus, logical thinking softens in favor of emotionality and superficiality.

The great response from television was also important. The way in which television sets the world in scene become a model for what the world should look like. The consequences of this are, on the one hand, the “surrealism of television information” and also that entertainment extends to other areas of life outside of the screen.

Postman criticized television as a medium of total disclosure that also reveals private and intimate areas of life. He names the collapse of moral rules of behavior as the danger of this aspect, but especially the reduction in shame. Since this medium depicts events as if they were happening at the moment of the broadcast, it creates a striving for direct satisfaction of needs and indifference towards the - in more civilized times still mysterious - world of the child, which Postman describes as "uncivilized" .

In 1996, Postman recognized positive aspects in the digitization of communication: “If the pupils learn to program [a computer] at school, that's fine. Because for that you have to think about thinking itself: an analytical process that would be important in our world determined by images. ”At the same time, however, he regrets that“ the teachers use computers like workbooks or other teaching aids ”. About the future of the Internet, Postman said in 1996: “It is important for scientific research and for large organizations like the Pentagon or widely ramified banks. But I don't think it is of particular importance to the average person. "

In his book, The Disappearance of Childhood , Postman looked at the effects of electronic media, particularly television, on childhood, which he sees on the wane. Childhood is a phenomenon that only appears at the end of the Middle Ages, because before that, the adult world and the child's world were still closely related. Adults and children were not very different from each other. With the invention of printing, this relationship between generations changed. Adults now have exclusive access to a world of knowledge that remains hidden from the child as long as they have not yet mastered the technique of reading. This creates a space - childhood - without access to the secrets of adult life. However, television dissolves this boundary by making adult knowledge accessible to everyone again. No topic is left out of the entertainment shows, incest, homosexuality and other topics are prepared for everyone - including children - and made available for consumption or for entertainment purposes.

To substantiate his thesis, Postman draws on numerous pieces of evidence. He goes into the crime statistics and finds that the number of serious crimes committed by children grew by 11,000 percent between 1950 and 1979. He also recognizes the earlier sexual maturity of girls as evidence for his thesis. Around 1900, the first menstruation occurred on average around the age of 14, while the average age in 1979 was 12 years. Here Postman speaks of a physiological indication for the abolition of childhood.

Postman died of lung cancer on October 5, 2003, at the age of 72 in Flushing , New York City .

Quotes

“Our television set ensures a constant connection to the world, but it does so with an unshakable smile on his face. The problem with television is not that it presents us with entertaining topics, the problem is that it presents every topic as entertainment. "

- We Are Having Fun We Die (1985), 110

"Television was not made for idiots - it creates them."

- We Amuse Each Other To Death (1985)

“Our defense mechanisms against the information glut have collapsed; our immune system against information no longer works. We suffer from some kind of cultural AIDS. "

- We Inform Each Other To Death (1992)

criticism

In his obituary for Postman's death, Peter V. Brinkemper argues that Postman's praise for written communication and his condemnation of visual communication fall behind Immanuel Kant . Its epistemological principle is: "Thoughts without content are empty, views without concepts are blind." It is important to overcome the rationalism of the pure word and the empiricism of mere views. Postman overlooks “that the fall into sin of the electronic information age can be explained not only monomedially, but only intermedially: with the correlative flattening of the text and image culture into a hybrid signature. Postman's criticism cemented the deterioration in quality itself as the cultural asymmetry of the media image versus language. "

Impact history

The third solo album by Roger Waters Amused to death is influenced by Neil Postman.

Works

  • Teaching as a Subversive Activity , 1969
    • Questions and learning. The school as a critical institution , March, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-87319-109-1
  • Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk: How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to Do About It , 1976
  • Teaching as a Conserving Activity , 1982
  • The Disappearance of Childhood , 1982
  • Amusing Ourselves to Death , 1985
    • We enjoy ourselves to death. Formation of judgment in the age of the entertainment industry , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-10-062407-6 .
  • Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education , 1988
  • Technopoly. The Surrender of Culture to Technology , 1992
    • The technopoly. The power of technologies and the incapacitation of society , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-10-062413-0 .
  • How to Watch TV News , with Steve Powers, 1992
  • The End of Education , 1995
  • Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future , Knopf, New York, NY 1999

literature

  • Armin Pongs : In which society do we actually live? Volume 1, Dilemma Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-9805822-2-1 (detailed interview with Neil Postman and presentation of the theory of the media society)
  • Marco Fuhrländer: Neil Postman , in: Joachim Kaiser (ed.): The book of 1,000 books. Authors, history, content and effect , Harenberg, Dortmund 2002, ISBN 3-611-01059-6 , p. 872 f. (well-founded introductory lexicon article on Neil Postman)

Web links

Wikiquote: Neil Postman  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Triumph der Albernheit , NZZ , October 20, 2018, page 43, title of the print edition
  2. ↑ Neil Postman: We inform ourselves to death . The time . Issue 41/1992. 2nd October 1992
  3. ↑ A conversation with media critic Neil Postman about education and computers in schools . The time . October 18, 1996
  4. ↑ A conversation with media critic Neil Postman about education and computers in schools . The time . October 18, 1996
  5. ↑ See Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood . Chapter 1: When there were no children , Fischer Verlag, 14th edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-23855-2 , pp. 13 ff., 28 f.
  6. ↑ See Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood . Chapter 2: The Printing Press and the New Adult . Fischer Verlag, 14th edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-23855-2 , p. 31 ff.
  7. ↑ See Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood . Chapter 6: The Medium of Total Revelation . Fischer Verlag, 14th edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-23855-2 , pp. 97-114
  8. ↑ See Neil Postman: The Disappearance of Childhood . Chapter 8: The Vanishing Child . Fischer Verlag, 14th edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-23855-2 , pp. 151-152
  9. ↑ See Neil Postman. The disappearance of childhood . Chapter 8: The Vanishing Child . Fischer Verlag, 14th edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-23855-2 , p. 138
  10. ↑ Peter V. Brinkemper: Neil Postman is dead. But his slogan "We amuse ourselves to death" lives on ambiguously . Telepolis . October 10, 2003
personal data
SURNAME Postman, Neil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American media scholar and non-fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 2003
Place of death new York