Rebuttle (of sorts) to Gore's Speech from Telecom Digest

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

   From: rrb () deja-vu aiss uiuc edu (Bill Pfeiffer)
   Subject: Rebuttle (of sorts) to Gore's Speech
   Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 18:12:41 -0600 (CST)


Dear TELECOM:


Here is a file of a speech by Neil Postman who has a slightly
different perspective on the Information Superhighway.


Bill Pfeiffer   Editor AIRWAVES RADIO JOURNAL (info () airwaves chi il us)




Source:  Neil Postman, German Informatics Society, 11 Oct 90, Stuttgart


Following speech was given at a meeting of the German Informatics
Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) on October 11, 1990 in
Stuttgart, sponsored by IBM-Germany.


                       INFORMING OURSELVES TO DEATH
                       ____________________________
                             by Neil Postman


The great English playwright and social philosopher George Bernard
Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the
common folk.  He meant that those who belong to elite trades -
physicians, lawyers, teachers, and scientists - protect their special
status by creating vocabularies that are incomprehensible to the
general public.  This process prevents outsiders from understanding
what the profession is doing and why - and protects the insiders from
close examination and criticism.  Professions, in other words, build
forbidding walls of technical gobbledegook over which the prying and
alien eye cannot see.


Unlike George Bernard Shaw, I raise no complaint against this, for I
consider myself a professional teacher and appreciate technical
gobbledegook as much as anyone.  But I do not object if occasionally
someone who does not know the secrets of my trade is allowed entry to
the inner halls to express an untutored point of view.  Such a person
may sometimes give a refreshing opinion or, even better, see something
in a way that the professionals have overlooked.


I believe I have been invited to speak at this conference for just
such a purpose.  I do not know very much more about computer
technology than the average person - which isn't very much.  I have
little understanding of what excites a computer programmer or
scientist, and in examining the descriptions of the presentations at
this conference, I found each one more mysterious than the next.  So,
I clearly qualify as an outsider.


But I think that what you want here is not merely an outsider but an
outsider who has a point of view that might be useful to the insiders.
And that is why I accepted the invitation to speak. I believe I know
something about what technologies do to culture, and I know even more
about what technologies undo in a culture. In fact, I might say, at
the start, that what a technology undoes is a subject that computer
experts apparently know very little about. I have heard many experts
in computer technology speak about the advantages that computers will
bring. With one exception - namely, Joseph Weizenbaum - I have never
heard anyone speak seriously and comprehensively about the
disadvantages of computer technology, which strikes me as odd, and
makes me wonder if the profession is hiding something important. That
is to say, what seems to be lacking among computer experts is a sense
of technological modesty.


After all, anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that
technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth
and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure.  A new
technology sometimes creates more than it destroys.  Sometimes, it
destroys more than it creates.  But it is never one-sided.


The invention of the printing press is an excellent example.  Printing
fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the
medieval sense of community and social integration.  Printing created
prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression.
Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious
sensibility into an exercise in superstition.  Printing assisted in
the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into
a sordid if not a murderous emotion.


Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor
some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for
example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by
television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as
balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological
change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.


In the case of computer technology, there can be no disputing that the
computer has increased the power of large-scale organizations like
military establishments or airline companies or banks or tax
collecting agencies. And it is equally clear that the computer is now
indispensable to high-level researchers in physics and other natural
sciences. But to what extent has computer technology been an advantage
to the masses of people? To steel workers, vegetable store owners,
teachers, automobile mechanics, musicians, bakers, brick layers,
dentists and most of the rest into whose lives the computer now
intrudes? These people have had their private matters made more
accessible to powerful institutions.  They are more easily tracked and
controlled; they are subjected to more examinations, and are
increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them. They are more
often reduced to mere numerical objects. They are being buried by junk
mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies and political
organizations. The schools teach their children to operate
computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable
to children. In a word, almost nothing happens to the losers that they
need, which is why they are losers.


It is to be expected that the winners - for example, most of the
speakers at this conference - will encourage the losers to be
enthusiastic about computer technology.  That is the way of winners,
and so they sometimes tell the losers that with personal computers the
average person can balance a checkbook more neatly, keep better track
of recipes, and make more logical shopping lists.  They also tell them
that they can vote at home, shop at home, get all the information they
wish at home, and thus make community life unnecessary.  They tell
them that their lives will be conducted more efficiently, discreetly
neglecting to say from whose point of view or what might be the costs
of such efficiency.


Should the losers grow skeptical, the winners dazzle them with the
wondrous feats of computers, many of which have only marginal
relevance to the quality of the losers' lives but which are
nonetheless impressive.  Eventually, the losers succumb, in part
because they believe that the specialized knowledge of the masters of
a computer technology is a form of wisdom. The masters, of course,
come to believe this as well.  The result is that certain questions do
not arise, such as, to whom will the computer give greater power and
freedom, and whose power and freedom will be reduced?


Now, I have perhaps made all of this sound like a wellplanned
conspiracy, as if the winners know all too well what is being won and
what lost. But this is not quite how it happens, for the winners do
not always know what they are doing, and where it will all lead. The
Benedictine monks who invented the mechanical clock in the 12th and
13th centuries believed that such a clock would provide a precise
regularity to the seven periods of devotion they were required to
observe during the course of the day.  As a matter of fact, it did.
But what the monks did not realize is that the clock is not merely a
means of keeping track of the hours but also of synchronizing and
controlling the actions of men. And so, by the middle of the 14th
century, the clock had moved outside the walls of the monastery, and
brought a new and precise regularity to the life of the workman and
the merchant. The mechanical clock made possible the idea of regular
production, regular working hours, and a standardized product.
Without the clock, capitalism would have been quite impossible. And
so, here is a great paradox: the clock was invented by men who wanted
to devote themselves more rigorously to God; and it ended as the
technology of greatest use to men who wished to devote themselves to
the accumulat- ion of money. Technology always has unforeseen
consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or
what will win, and who or what will lose.


I might add, by way of another historical example, that Johann
Gutenberg was by all accounts a devoted Christian who would have been
horrified to hear Martin Luther, the accursed heretic, declare that
printing is "God's highest act of grace, whereby the business of the
Gospel is driven forward." Gutenberg thought his invention would
advance the cause of the Holy Roman See, whereas in fact, it turned
out to bring a revolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Church.


We may well ask ourselves, then, is there something that the masters
of computer technology think they are doing for us which they and we
may have reason to regret? I believe there is, and it is suggested by
the title of my talk, "Informing Ourselves to Death".  In the time
remaining, I will try to explain what is dangerous about the computer,
and why. And I trust you will be open enough to consider what I have
to say. Now, I think I can begin to get at this by telling you of a
small experiment I have been conducting, on and off, for the past
several years. There are some people who describe the experiment as an
exercise in deceit and exploitation but I will rely on your sense of
humor to pull me through.


Here's how it works: It is best done in the morning when I see a
colleague who appears not to be in possession of a copy of {The New
York Times}. "Did you read The Times this morning?," I ask. If the
colleague says yes, there is no experiment that day. But if the answer
is no, the experiment can proceed. "You ought to look at Page 23," I
say. "There's a fascinating article about a study done at Harvard
University."  "Really? What's it about?" is the usual reply. My
choices at this point are limited only by my imagination. But I might
say something like this: "Well, they did this study to find out what
foods are best to eat for losing weight, and it turns out that a
normal diet supplemented by chocolate eclairs, eaten six times a day,
is the best approach. It seems that there's some special nutrient in
the eclairs - encomial dioxin - that actually uses up calories at an
incredible rate."


Another possibility, which I like to use with colleagues who are known
to be health conscious is this one: "I think you'll want to know about
this," I say. "The neuro-physiologists at the University of Stuttgart
have uncovered a connection between jogging and reduced intelligence.
They tested more than 1200 people over a period of five years, and
found that as the number of hours people jogged increased, there was a
corresponding decrease in their intelligence. They don't know exactly
why but there it is."


I'm sure, by now, you understand what my role is in the experiment: to
report something that is quite ridiculous - one might say, beyond
belief. Let me tell you, then, some of my results: Unless this is the
second or third time I've tried this on the same person, most people
will believe or at least not disbelieve what I have told them. Some-
times they say: "Really? Is that possible?" Sometimes they do a
double-take, and reply, "Where'd you say that study was done?" And
sometimes they say, "You know, I've heard something like that."


Now, there are several conclusions that might be drawn from these
results, one of which was expressed by H. L. Mencken fifty years ago
when he said, there is no idea so stupid that you can't find a
professor who will believe it. This is more of an accusation than an
explanation but in any case I have tried this experiment on non-
professors and get roughly the same results. Another possible con-
clusion is one expressed by George Orwell - also about 50 years ago -
when he remarked that the average person today is about as naive as
was the average person in the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages people
believed in the authority of their religion, no matter what. Today, we
believe in the authority of our science, no matter what.


But I think there is still another and more important conclusion to be
drawn, related to Orwell's point but rather off at a right angle to
it. I am referring to the fact that the world in which we live is very
nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact -
whether actual or imagined - that will surprise us for very long,
since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world
which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.  We
believe because there is no reason not to believe. No social,
political, historical, metaphysical, logical or spiritual reason. We
live in a world that, for the most part, makes no sense to us. Not
even technical sense. I don't mean to try my experiment on this
audience, especially after having told you about it, but if I informed
you that the seats you are presently occupying were actually made by a
special process which uses the skin of a Bismark herring, on what
grounds would you dispute me? For all you know - indeed, for all I
know - the skin of a Bismark herring could have made the seats on