Morris Berman may not have been the first person to offer simultaneous commentary on American culture and Fahrenheit 451 by observing that the former has basically transformed itself into the dystopian society depicted by the latter. Many people have noted in the decades since Fahrenheit was first published in 1953 that things have been moving…
Tag: Neil Postman
Technology and schools: Update on a techno-utopian delusion
Throughout the 1990s the Clinton administration pushed hard for the universal integration of computers and information technology throughout America’s public education system, culminating in Bill Clinton’s official presidential call for “A computer in every classroom,” since, in his words, technology is “the great equalizer” for schools. No matter that it was an idea (and ideology)…
Beware the American craze for college credentialing
The editors of the always-valuable n+1 have published a penetrating and damning assessment of what’s wrong with the craze for credentials that marks the American economic and educational landscape right now. It’s all the more valuable for putting the whole thing in long-historical perspective. For the contemporary bachelor or master or doctor of this or that,…
The dumbing of American political speech has truly apocalyptic implications
NPR reported it this morning, and I listened with rapt attention during my commute to work: It turns out that the sophistication of congressional speech-making is on the decline, according to the open government group the Sunlight Foundation. Since 2005, the average grade level at which members of Congress speak has fallen by almost a…
Liberating, efficient, utilitarian — bloodless? The evolving Kindle experience
In August of 2009, I bought a Kindle. I was immediately quite happy with it (see “Impressions and advice from a new Kindle DX owner“), and I continue to be so these two and a half years later. My Kindle has become a major part of my reading world as a whole, particularly as a…
Advertising is pseudo-therapy. Consumers are its patients.
Neil Postman wrote this in 1993. It still holds true today. Maybe even more so. [A] discovery which for convenience’s sake we may attribute to Procter and Gamble [is] that advertising is most effective when it is irrational. By irrational, I do not, of course, mean crazy. I mean that products could best be sold…
Scientism, the “social sciences,” and the assault on the human self
Maybe it’s the rise of “positive psychology,” “happiness studies,” “happiness economics,” and other attempts to quantify human happiness and gain a “scientific understanding” of it that has gotten under my skin. Maybe it’s the veritable tsunami of poll results and policy recommendations flooding through the collective consciousness during the current American presidential campaign season, all…
Hemingway, media culture, and the impoverishment of modern English
It’s been awhile since a conversation at the Shocklines message boards elicited a response from me that I wanted to preserve here at The Teeming Brain, but just yesterday it happened again and resulted in my writing an article-length piece that briefly traced my personal, lifelong evolution and growth as a reader. The inimitable Des…
Anna Nicole Smith Is the Fourth Horseman
The only daily newspaper that originates from my part of the world is The News-Leader, which is located in Springfield, Missouri. It blankets southwest Missouri and part of Arkansas. Last Tuesday, February 13th, editorial page editor Tony Messenger posted a brief observation at his blog, “Ozarks Messenger,” titled “A sign of the apocalypse…” It read…
More on anti-intellectualism
I hope you all had a good week. As for me, I’m safely back from a brief doctor-oriented jaunt to Texas — specifically, to Austin and San Antonio — and can report that yes, it’s hot down there. And humid, at least in the two cities where my wife and I went. Imagine Dante’s Inferno…