Research On Media Technology Critical Thought Of Neil Postman

Technology is a double-edged sword, which can both benefit mankind and cause someserious damage. Technology, especially media technology becomes more obviously in this area.On the one hand, it does accelerate the speed of information dissemination, broaden the channelsfor people to interact, broaden people’s horizons and enrich people’s leisure life, and promote thesocial and cultural heritage. It plays a very important role in the history of the progress of humancivilization. On the other hand, media technology also had a negative impact on today’s society,which is in a silent way and make the people be willing to accept it. Especially the emergence ofradio, television, mobile phones, computers and other electronic media technology have changedsome matrix of traditional culture, for they biased to the entertainment. Under the pan of suchone-dimensional cultural entertainment, media technology not only makes the majority of thechildren lost their virginity, but also makes the general public to a pure recreational species. Inorder to guard against such harm to humans, Postman presented his famous critical theory ofmedia technology according to the development of today’s technology.Postman’s critical theory of media technologies, mainly reflected in his trilogy of mediatechnology including: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Childhood Disappearing and TechnologyMonopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology. One of his main thoughts is that once thetechnology develops to the monopoly stage, it will become inevitable that technology causedharm to the humans. We must be alert to this harm. To better grasp the critical thought ofPostman’s media technologies, the thesis analyzes the theoretical background and origin aboutthe generation of Postman’s critical thought of media technologies. Then on this basis, it mainlyfocuses on the contents of Postman’s critical thought of technology, especially reveals that themedia’s bias is too entertainment because of the technology, thus will inevitably lead to meddlein human culture, which eventually led that culture surrendered to the technology; person isnurtured by the culture together, so this pan-cultural entertainment technology caused by themedia is bound to affect people’s social life and interfere their life course, leading to the seriousconsequences, including the disappearance of children and contribution to transform childhoodinto an adult (unidirectional entertaining animal); Due to meddle in culture and interfere people’slife, media technologies ultimately are bound to rule mankind, which make the mankind becomeslaves to technology. Finally, the thesis also describes the real cautionary meanings of Bozeman’scritical theory of technology, we can use his technical pessimism to alert the harm that moderntechnology could bring to human beings, with his humanism to lead the development of moderntechnology, so that modern technology can better serve humanity and avoid the mankind beingdestroyed by what they loved.