Brady Bowman
New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop.
Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean ‘ecological’ in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.
Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.
Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital source of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.
Tell us how you really feel, Neil.
Currently reading: Technopoly by Neil Postman 📚
