MANUFACTURING CONSENT
Informing Ourselves To
Death
Neil Postman,
Author of Amusing Ourselves to
Death
Speech at a
meeting of the German Informatics Society
on October 11, 1990 in Stuttgart, sponsored by
IBM-Germany
" ..The tie between information and action
has been severed. Information is now a commodity
that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of
entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance
one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed
at no one in particular, disconnected from
usefulness; we are glutted with information,
drowning in information, have no control over it,
don't know what to do with it...The computer is
an answer to the questions, how can I get more
information, faster, and in a more usable form?
These would appear to be reasonable questions.
But now I should like to put some other questions
to you that seem to me more reasonable. Did Iraq
invade Kuwait because of a lack of information?..
Does racism in South Africa exist because of a
lack of information?.. Here is what Henry David
Thoreau told us: 'All our inventions are but
improved means to an unimproved end.. There is no
escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as
it has always been, and we solve nothing
fundamental by cloaking ourselves in
technological glory. ..'"
Comment by
tamilnation.org 30
January 2008 " Or does the international
community's refuse to recognise the justice of
the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam
for freedom from alien Sinhala rule, and
act in the way it does,
because 'of a lack of
information'?
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
accumulation 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.
Sometimes 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
conclusion 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 which
you sit. And if I could get an industrial chemist
to confirm this fact by describing some
incomprehensible process by which it was done, you
would probably tell someone tomorrow that you spent
the evening sitting on a Bismark herring.
Perhaps I can get a bit closer to the point I
wish to make with an analogy: If you opened a
brand-new deck of cards, and started turning the
cards over, one by one, you would have a pretty
good idea of what their order is. After you had
gone from the ace of spades through the nine of
spades, you would expect a ten of spades to come up
next. And if a three of diamonds showed up instead,
you would be surprised and wonder what kind of deck
of cards this is. But if I gave you a deck that had
been shuffled twenty times, and then asked you to
turn the cards over, you would not expect any card
in particular -- a three of diamonds would be just
as likely as a ten of spades. Having no basis for
assuming a given order, you would have no reason to
react with disbelief or even surprise to whatever
card turns up.
The point is that, in a world without spiritual
or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable;
nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing
comes as a particular surprise.
In fact, George Orwell was more than a little
unfair to the average person in the Middle Ages.
The belief system of the Middle Ages was rather
like my brand-new deck of cards. There existed an
ordered, comprehensible world-view, beginning with
the idea that all knowledge and goodness come from
God. What the priests had to say about the world
was derived from the logic of their theology.
There was nothing arbitrary about the things
people were asked to believe, including the fact
that the world itself was created at 9 AM on
October 23 in the year 4004 B.C. That could be
explained, and was, quite lucidly, to the
satisfaction of anyone. So could the fact that
10,000 angels could dance on the head of a pin. It
made quite good sense, if you believed that the
Bible is the revealed word of God and that the
universe is populated with angels. The medieval
world was, to be sure, mysterious and filled with
wonder, but it was not without a sense of order.
Ordinary men and women might not clearly grasp how
the harsh realities of their lives fit into the
grand and benevolent design, but they had no doubt
that there was such a design, and their priests
were well able, by deduction from a handful of
principles, to make it, if not rational, at least
coherent.
The situation we are presently in is much
different. And I should say, sadder and more
confusing and certainly more mysterious. It is
rather like the shuffled deck of cards I referred
to. There is no consistent, integrated conception
of the world which serves as the foundation on
which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore,
in a sense, we are more naive than those of the
Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be
made to believe almost anything. The skin of a
Bismark herring makes about as much sense as a
vinyl alloy or encomial dioxin.
Now, in a way, none of this is our fault. If I
may turn the wisdom of Cassius on its head: the
fault is not in ourselves but almost literally in
the stars. When Galileo turned his telescope toward
the heavens, and allowed Kepler to look as well,
they found no enchantment or authorization in the
stars, only geometric patterns and equations. God,
it seemed, was less of a moral philosopher than a
master mathematician. This discovery helped to give
impetus to the development of physics but did
nothing but harm to theology. Before Galileo and
Kepler, it was possible to believe that the Earth
was the stable center of the universe, and that God
took a special interest in our affairs. Afterward,
the Earth became a lonely wanderer in an obscure
galaxy in a hidden corner of the universe, and we
were left to wonder if God had any interest in us
at all. The ordered, comprehensible world of the
Middle Ages began to unravel because people no
longer saw in the stars the face of a friend.
And something else, which once was our friend,
turned against us, as well. I refer to information.
There was a time when information was a resource
that helped human beings to solve specific and
urgent problems of their environment. It is true
enough that in the Middle Ages, there was a
scarcity of information but its very scarcity made
it both important and usable.
This began to change, as everyone knows, in the
late 15th century when a goldsmith named Gutenberg,
from Mainz, converted an old wine press into a
printing machine, and in so doing, created what we
now call an information explosion. Forty years
after the invention of the press, there were
printing machines in 110 cities in six different
countries; 50 years after, more than eight million
books had been printed, almost all of them filled
with information that had previously not been
available to the average person.
Nothing could be more misleading than the idea
that computer technology introduced the age of
information. The printing press began that age, and
we have not been free of it since.
But what started out as a liberating stream has
turned into a deluge of chaos. If I may take my own
country as an example, here is what we are faced
with: In America, there are 260,000 billboards;
11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video
outlets for renting tapes; 362 million TV sets; and
over 400 million radios. There are 40,000 new book
titles published every year (300,000 world-wide)
and every day in America 41 million photographs are
taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion
pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail
boxes every year.
Everything from telegraphy and photography in
the 19th century to the silicon chip in the
twentieth has amplified the din of information,
until matters have reached such proportions today
that for the average person, information no longer
has any relation to the solution of problems.
The tie between information and action has been
severed. Information is now a commodity that can be
bought and sold, or used as a form of
entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance
one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed
at no one in particular, disconnected from
usefulness; we are glutted with information,
drowning in information, have no control over it,
don't know what to do with it.
And there are two reasons we do not know what
to do with it. First, as I have said, we no
longer have a coherent conception of ourselves,
and our universe, and our relation to one another
and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle
Ages did, where we come from, and where we are
going, or why. That is, we don't know what
information is relevant, and what information is
irrelevant to our lives. Second, we have directed
all of our energies and intelligence to inventing
machinery that does nothing but increase the
supply of information. As a consequence, our
defenses against information glut have broken
down; our information immune system is
inoperable. We don't know how to filter it out;
we don't know how to reduce it; we don't know to
use it. We suffer from a kind of cultural
AIDS.
Now, into this situation comes the computer. The
computer, as we know, has a quality of
universality, not only because its uses are almost
infinitely various but also because computers are
commonly integrated into the structure of other
machines. Therefore it would be fatuous of me to
warn against every conceivable use of a computer.
But there is no denying that the most prominent
uses of computers have to do with information.
When people talk about "information sciences,"
they are talking about computers -- how to store
information, how to retrieve information, how to
organize information. The computer is an answer to
the questions, how can I get more information,
faster, and in a more usable form? These would
appear to be reasonable questions.
But now I should like to put some other
questions to you that seem to me more reasonable.
Did Iraq invade Kuwait because of a lack of
information? If a hideous war should ensue between
Iraq and the U.S., will it happen because of a lack
of information? If children die of starvation in
Ethiopia, does it occur because of a lack of
information? Does racism in South Africa exist
because of a lack of information? If criminals roam
the streets of New York City, do they do so because
of a lack of information?
Or, let us come down to a more personal level:
If you and your spouse are unhappy together, and
end your marriage in divorce, will it happen
because of a lack of information? If your children
misbehave and bring shame to your family, does it
happen because of a lack of information? If someone
in your family has a mental breakdown, will it
happen because of a lack of information?
I believe you will have to concede that what
ails us, what causes us the most misery and pain --
at both cultural and personal levels -- has nothing
to do with the sort of information made accessible
by computers. The computer and its information
cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we
need to address to make our lives more meaningful
and humane.
The computer cannot provide an organizing moral
framework. It cannot tell us what questions are
worth asking. It cannot provide a means of
understanding why we are here or why we fight each
other or why decency eludes us so often, especially
when we need it the most.
The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy
that distracts us from facing what we most needed
to confront -- spiritual emptiness, knowledge of
ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and
future. Does one blame the computer for this? Of
course not. It is, after all, only a machine. But
it is presented to us, with trumpets blaring, as at
this conference, as a technological messiah.
Through the computer, the heralds say, we will
make education better, religion better, politics
better, our minds better -- best of all, ourselves
better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the
young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe
it. I said a moment ago that computers are not to
blame for this. And that is true, at least in the
sense that we do not blame an elephant for its huge
appetite or a stone for being hard or a cloud for
hiding the sun. That is their nature, and we expect
nothing different from them. But the computer has a
nature, as well. True, it is only a machine but a
machine designed to manipulate and generate
information. That is what computers do, and
therefore they have an agenda and an unmistakable
message.
The message is that through more and more
information, more conveniently packaged, more
swiftly delivered, we will find solutions to our
problems. And so all the brilliant young men and
women, believing this, create ingenious things for
the computer to do, hoping that in this way, we
will become wiser and more decent and more noble.
And who can blame them?
By becoming masters of this wondrous technology,
they will acquire prestige and power and some will
even become famous. In a world populated by people
who believe that through more and more information,
paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is
king. But I maintain that all of this is a
monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and
energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this
talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to
theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or
to education? Who knows what we could learn from
such people -- perhaps why there are wars, and
hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and
anger.
As things stand now, the geniuses of computer
technology will give us Star Wars, and tell us that
is the answer to nuclear war. They will give us
artificial intelligence, and tell us that this is
the way to self-knowledge. They will give us
instantaneous global communication, and tell us
this is the way to mutual understanding. They will
give us Virtual Reality and tell us this is the
answer to spiritual poverty. But that is only the
way of the technician, the fact-mongerer, the
information junkie, and the technological
idiot.
Here is what Henry David Thoreau told us: "All
our inventions are but improved means to an
unimproved end." Here is what Goethe told us: "One
should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a
good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is
possible, speak a few reasonable words." And here
is what Socrates told us: "The unexamined life is
not worth living." And here is what the prophet
Micah told us: "What does the Lord require of thee
but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk
humbly with thy God?" And I can tell you -- if I
had the time (although you all know it well enough)
-- what Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mohammed, the
Buddha, Spinoza and Shakespeare told us. It is all
the same: There is no escaping from ourselves. The
human dilemma is as it has always been, and we
solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in
technological glory.
Even the humblest cartoon character knows this,
and I shall close by quoting the wise old possum
named Pogo, created by the cartoonist, Walt Kelley.
I commend his words to all the technological
utopians and messiahs present. "We have met the
enemy," Pogo said, "and he is us."
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