4 ms·

Interesting but flawed in many ways: >Think of the automobile, which for all of its obvious advantages, has poisoned our air, choked our cities I'm not sure t

by renox 12y ago

Interesting but flawed in many ways: >Think of the automobile, which for all of its obvious advantages, has poisoned our air, choked our cities I'm not sure that the smell of horse shit before the automobile was much better than car's pollution.. > The printing press gave the Western world prose, [cut]. It gave us inductive science, but it reduced religious sensibility to a form of fanciful superstition. That's a drawback??? > If you should propose to the average American that [cut] that there should be no television commercials, he will think the idea ridiculous. In France we have no television commercials in the evening on the public channels, the average French didn't find this idea ridiculous (though there was a debate as this obviously has also drawbacks) and I don't think that the average French is much different than the average American (short of being less religious and less "patriotic"). Plus when he write "That is why we must be cautious about technological innovation." he destroy it just after "The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible.", how can we be cautious about technological innovation when its consequences are unpredictable??

bmj 12y ago
There's a lot more to car use than simply pollution. Read Illich or Kunstler on the sorts of cultural changes that rapid transportation has produced. I think when Postman speaks of caution, he is arguing against a technocratic perspective that sees any and all technology as ultimately good because it is the primary means of fixing a problem. I think Postman (and others like him) would argue that technology can be good and useful, but it becomes dangerous when we perceive every issue facing humanity as simply a technical problem. Regarding ads on TV, what constitutes a "public" station in France? Public stations in the U.S. do not have commercials, but I suspect the average American is watching a private station, which has commercials every ten minutes.
- renox 12y ago
  > what constitutes a "public" station in France? We have three (four?) of those: and the content is quite similar to private stations except that they receive money from taxes and ads instead of only ads. Of course they have some constraint that private stations don't have such as coverage of elections, etc.
dredmorbius 12y ago
I'm actually pretty familiar with the literature concerning urban pollution from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The amount of crap the 120,000 horses of New York City could produce was prodigious. But it's also true that the automobile exhibits (and delivers) a clear set of values, and that in adopting the car you adopt those values. Simply looking at the streets and city layouts of towns which pre- and post-date the automobile makes this starkly clear. James Howard Kunstler, as noted, reflects on this, Jane Jacobs did in an earlier age. I mention the Heusemanns in another comment to this post, their book Techno-Fix focuses on the values aspect and automobiles specifically. There are points where Postman does exhibit a certain failure of imagination, though many of his points do hit the mark. It's a good perspective. As for commercials: I see them increasingly as a significant problem. Even "public" broadcasting in the US includes "sponsorship credits" which are increasingly little-removed from advertising.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Your scare quotes on public are really only appropriate if you think PBS is misrepresenting itself. I don't think they work hard to make people think they are part of the government (but I don't watch closely). As far as the videos they show between programs, those are advertisements, I don't see any reason to treat it as ambiguous. It is nice that they are mostly between programs.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    My primary intent was the "public as noncommercial" meaning. That's an increasingly blurry line. I've been a watcher and listener for long enough that I remember when there were far fewer credits and they were much less specific. There's the other can of worms about various influencers of what appears (or doesn't) on PBS, NPR, PRI, and APM. There's Noam Chomsky having interviews and essays pulled on minutes' notice from NPR, Koch intervention with IIRC WBUR Boston, and numerous other instances. I've been noting a general lack of appropriate coverage for well over a decade, though some of that may simply be my own increasing sensitivity. Not that there aren't exceptions. Terry Gross's "Fresh Air", Ira Glass's "This American Life", "Bill Moyers and Company", and "The Commonwealth Club" tend to provide some of the most insightful programming. If I had to choose between the news coverage and those four programs (three of which are once a week), I'd pick the latter. "Planet Money" has been good but gets washed out when it's in a normal news broadcast. Listening to a local station's pledge recently I was struck by the comment that the three most-valued aspects of programming were all long-form programs: a call-in talk show generally committing a full hour to a single issue, Fresh Air, and This American Life. They're also all associated with a single principle personality. I see this as a call for giving time to explore a topic in depth rather than the several minutes' limit imposed by other formats (which itself is far longer than most commercial news programs). Though the non-frantic nature of the programs also possibly plays a role: these are thoughtful conversations between adults. I can't stand the commercial documentary breathless reporter, hyperbole, and thumping soundtrack format at all (usually encountered through YouTube samplings if at all these days).

by renox 12y ago

bmj 12y ago

There's a lot more to car use than simply pollution. Read Illich or Kunstler on the sorts of cultural changes that rapid transportation has produced. I think when Postman speaks of caution, he is arguing against a technocratic perspective that sees any and all technology as ultimately good because it is the primary means of fixing a problem. I think Postman (and others like him) would argue that technology can be good and useful, but it becomes dangerous when we perceive every issue facing humanity as simply a technical problem. Regarding ads on TV, what constitutes a "public" station in France? Public stations in the U.S. do not have commercials, but I suspect the average American is watching a private station, which has commercials every ten minutes.

renox 12y ago
> what constitutes a "public" station in France? We have three (four?) of those: and the content is quite similar to private stations except that they receive money from taxes and ads instead of only ads. Of course they have some constraint that private stations don't have such as coverage of elections, etc.

dredmorbius 12y ago

I'm actually pretty familiar with the literature concerning urban pollution from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The amount of crap the 120,000 horses of New York City could produce was prodigious. But it's also true that the automobile exhibits (and delivers) a clear set of values, and that in adopting the car you adopt those values. Simply looking at the streets and city layouts of towns which pre- and post-date the automobile makes this starkly clear. James Howard Kunstler, as noted, reflects on this, Jane Jacobs did in an earlier age. I mention the Heusemanns in another comment to this post, their book Techno-Fix focuses on the values aspect and automobiles specifically. There are points where Postman does exhibit a certain failure of imagination, though many of his points do hit the mark. It's a good perspective. As for commercials: I see them increasingly as a significant problem. Even "public" broadcasting in the US includes "sponsorship credits" which are increasingly little-removed from advertising.

maxerickson 12y ago
Your scare quotes on public are really only appropriate if you think PBS is misrepresenting itself. I don't think they work hard to make people think they are part of the government (but I don't watch closely). As far as the videos they show between programs, those are advertisements, I don't see any reason to treat it as ambiguous. It is nice that they are mostly between programs.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  My primary intent was the "public as noncommercial" meaning. That's an increasingly blurry line. I've been a watcher and listener for long enough that I remember when there were far fewer credits and they were much less specific. There's the other can of worms about various influencers of what appears (or doesn't) on PBS, NPR, PRI, and APM. There's Noam Chomsky having interviews and essays pulled on minutes' notice from NPR, Koch intervention with IIRC WBUR Boston, and numerous other instances. I've been noting a general lack of appropriate coverage for well over a decade, though some of that may simply be my own increasing sensitivity. Not that there aren't exceptions. Terry Gross's "Fresh Air", Ira Glass's "This American Life", "Bill Moyers and Company", and "The Commonwealth Club" tend to provide some of the most insightful programming. If I had to choose between the news coverage and those four programs (three of which are once a week), I'd pick the latter. "Planet Money" has been good but gets washed out when it's in a normal news broadcast. Listening to a local station's pledge recently I was struck by the comment that the three most-valued aspects of programming were all long-form programs: a call-in talk show generally committing a full hour to a single issue, Fresh Air, and This American Life. They're also all associated with a single principle personality. I see this as a call for giving time to explore a topic in depth rather than the several minutes' limit imposed by other formats (which itself is far longer than most commercial news programs). Though the non-frantic nature of the programs also possibly plays a role: these are thoughtful conversations between adults. I can't stand the commercial documentary breathless reporter, hyperbole, and thumping soundtrack format at all (usually encountered through YouTube samplings if at all these days).