Reference
Summary:
The article, Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change is a transcript of an address by Neil Postman to New Tech 98 Conference in Denver, Colorado. The theme of the conference was “The New Technologies and the Human Person: Communicating the Faith in the New Millennium”; in his address, Postman outlines five ideas about technology that he hopes will help his audience think about the relationship between technology and religious faith. The five ideas can be summarized as follows:
Idea #1: With all technological advances we gain some things, but we lose other things. One example that he gives of this is that with the internet we gain access to knowledge, but we may lose community.
Idea #2: New technologies are never distributed evenly among the whole population. Therefore, we have to ask who is benefiting from new technologies and who may be harmed.
Idea #3: New technologies bring with them new cultural ideas. For example, with the computer comes the idea that knowledge is valuable; this new cultural idea takes the place of an older culture where wisdom was valued.
Idea #4: As new technology is invented, it changes our entire world rather than simply adding a new thing to it.
Idea #5: New technologies are eventually taken for granted. People forget that life was once possible without them.
Postman concluded his address by challenging his audience to pay attention to the way we interact with new technologies; “we need to proceed with our eyes wide open so that we may use technology rather than be used by it” (Neil, 1998, p. 6).
Reaction:
Postman’s 1998 article is used at the opening chapter in the 2010/2011 edition of Computers in Society. The article is currently thirteen years old, however the five ideas about technological change that Postman list are still valid today. I was especially struck by idea #4, which states that technological change is ecological rather than additive. Technology is constantly changing and changing the culture in which we live. As a teacher, it is important to remember that the students in our classrooms may not have had the same history with technology that we have. The way that each of us interacts with technology affects how we think, act, and learn.
