Rating: 
Summary: If you find this interesting...
Review: ...then you should read the novel "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. Set somewhat in the future, the world has splintered into various social enclaves. Pre-eminent among these is the enclave of "The New Victorians" - who have adopted Victorian values and culture to a dizzingly advanced world of technology. They have consciously chosen this culture on the grounds that the Victorian age was the last truly viable form of civilization. Needless to say of Stephenson, this is only one intriguing idea out of a broad palette of stunning perspectives.
Rating: 
Summary: Thin
Review: I wanted to like this book, but I found it disappointingly thin. I wouldn't go so far as the previous reviewer and dismiss it as "hopeless", but it's certainly superficial: Postman seems to rely on secondary sources about Enlightenment thought, rather than any deep reading of Enlightenment texts. The idea of "building a bridge to the 18th century" seems more like a marketing device, a fresh way of presenting some of Postman's familiar themes, than a serious proposition (He even includes a summary of his "disappearance of childhood" argument in an appendix). It's a shame, really, because the Enlightenment has been getting too much undeservedly bad press for far too long, and Postman is correct when he points out that we owe much of what's good and admirable about contemporary society to Enlightened thinking. For a much more substantial survey and defence of Enlightenment thought and culture, read Roy Porter's _The Creation of the Modern World: The British Enlightenment_.
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Summary: Cautioning Us of Improved Means to an Unimproved End
Review: In declaring himself an enemy of the twentieth century, Neil Postman grieves that the past century forgot the importance of precise language in public dialogue. The consequences have resulted in the most inhumane and violent period in all history. (Richard Rubinstein's book "The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future" has already reminded us of the unprecedented scale of atrocity committed in this century. Need I mention the battle of Verdun, Pol Pot, China's Communist revolution, two world wars, the atomic bomb - alas, where shall I stop?) Postman is aware of the eighteenth century's cruelties - child labor, slavery, anonymity of women, but he believes that the great thinkers of the period were almost unique in offering the kind of thought that could make the course of history more humane.Indeed, he even posits that childhood is not a biological condition, but was an invention of the eighteenth century, for it was the civilization that actually thought that a youthful period of preparation was necessary. Regrettably, he argues, our generation has regressed by eliminating childhood. Does childhood exist if television, the Internet and the media expose the young to the same information that adults receive? In this respect, we are more like a fourteenth century civilization that bypassed the written word and granted full exposure of adult knowledge, sexuality, and activity to anyone who could speak. Postman cautions that we tend to evaluate technology by the claims of technologists alone, forgetting to ask the ethicist, the poet, the novelist, and the artist for an evaluation. It doesn't occur to most people to question the benefit of a new technology, and who benefits, and who pays. Of high importance is a return to the written word, for the written word requires an author to forever place his name on an idea, but the stream of information and the interactive media make all the populace instant plebiscites and pose us for an end of democracy, or a democracy that degenerates into a "mobocracy." His book is not a road map or a menu or an agenda. He does not tell us what to think, but reminds us of the importance of learning how to think analytically and humanely.
Rating: 
Summary: Devil's advocate for the tech revolution
Review: Postman clarifies the impact that technology (computers and television) has on us to such an extent that I was tempted to toss my computer and TV out the window half way through the book. And while Postman has not personally succumed to the siren of the computer, his head is also not buried too deeply in the sand. If anything, he wants us to transcend the age of technology in the 20th century to a new enlightenment in the 21st century. At stake is the loss of childhood which he says was defined in the 18th century as a result of an earlier technological advancement: movable type.
Rating:
Summary: One of Postman's best
Review: Postman's books have always divided readers. Some feel that his critical eye is too focused on the past and doesn't adequately and realistically weigh in today's cultural variables. Others feel that his is one of the most stable and eloquent voices of reason in a predominately subjective society. While I'll admit that Postman is oftentimes to social criticism what Wynton Marsalis is to jazz, he is first and foremost a questioner, a modern day Socrates who asks how technology both hurts and helps us. It is his empirical approach that keeps me buying his books. To reduce Postman to a traditionalist is far too limiting. While he does champion the past and favor reason over emotion, he is also an idealist who believes that society has the power to cure what ails it, if it's only willing to take the necessary steps. "Building A Bridge To the 18th Century" is a collection of suggested steps based on 18th century utilitarian values and practices. Above all, I like Postman's style. He is a direct, eloquent writer, a person whose ideas and insights are clearly spelled out. And despite others' charge that he is a curmudgeon, I find him humorous and open-minded.
Rating:
Summary: One of Postman's best
Review: Postman's books have always divided readers. Some feel that his critical eye is too focused on the past and doesn't adequately and realistically weigh in today's cultural variables. Others feel that his is one of the most stable and eloquent voices of reason in a predominately subjective society. While I'll admit that Postman is oftentimes to social criticism what Wynton Marsalis is to jazz, he is first and foremost a questioner, a modern day Socrates who asks how technology both hurts and helps us. It is his empirical approach that keeps me buying his books. To reduce Postman to a traditionalist is far too limiting. While he does champion the past and favor reason over emotion, he is also an idealist who believes that society has the power to cure what ails it, if it's only willing to take the necessary steps. "Building A Bridge To the 18th Century" is a collection of suggested steps based on 18th century utilitarian values and practices. Above all, I like Postman's style. He is a direct, eloquent writer, a person whose ideas and insights are clearly spelled out. And despite others' charge that he is a curmudgeon, I find him humorous and open-minded.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing ramble
Review: Readers looking for an introduction to the great thinkers of the Age of Reason will be disappointed by this book. Postman's explanations are cursory at best, and he seems to use the Age of Reason as a launching lad for airing some of his pet peeves about modern life. He does not use e-mail, nor a word processor, nor the Internet, and he doesn't understand why anyone else would want to, either. Postman suggests that when a new technology is proposed, we should ask, who benefits? He doesn't seem to have much faith in the free market to decide the question for us. I think useless products will not succeed, products that people find useful, will. Or, to take further issue with Mr. Postman, why can't people be silly and frivolous and spend their money on things HE would choose not to? On the question of education, he is on more solid ground, since education is the proper province of a democratic government. I agree that teaching logic and rhetoric in school would help our children cope with the Information Age. Overall though, this book is self-indulgent, a miscellaneous collection of thoughts and arguments. I suggest the reader's time would be better spent with the original curmudgeon (as preserved by his biographer, Boswell): Dr. Samuel Johnson: a better writer, a better wit, and a better introduction to the period of history called the Age of Reason.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing ramble
Review: Readers looking for an introduction to the great thinkers of the Age of Reason will be disappointed by this book. Postman's explanations are cursory at best, and he seems to use the Age of Reason as a launching lad for airing some of his pet peeves about modern life. He does not use e-mail, nor a word processor, nor the Internet, and he doesn't understand why anyone else would want to, either. Postman suggests that when a new technology is proposed, we should ask, who benefits? He doesn't seem to have much faith in the free market to decide the question for us. I think useless products will not succeed, products that people find useful, will. Or, to take further issue with Mr. Postman, why can't people be silly and frivolous and spend their money on things HE would choose not to? On the question of education, he is more solid ground, since education is the proper province of a democratic government. I agree that teaching logic and rhetoric in school would help our children cope with the Information Age. Overall though, this book is self-indulgent, a miscellaneous collection of thoughts and arguments. I suggest the reader's time would be better spent with the original curmudgeon (as preserved by his biographer, Boswell): Dr. Samuel Johnson: a better writer, a better wit, and a better introduction to the period of history called the Age of Reason.
Rating:
Summary: Not a Luddite
Review: Somehow Postman has been accused of being a luddite. I'm not sure how he got theis reputation. He is certainly critical of present excesses, but as this book shows, he merely - and justly - questions current ideas that have degenerated to produce dubious advantages. he has no objections to technology or science but, he argues, there is aneed to revert to a more humanist (which also implies liberal in the good sense of the word) approaches to temper the way technology is creeping intrusively into our lives. In philosophical terms he argues against cultural relativism and its older brother deconstruction - i.e. Derrida, Lacan. in this he is joined - though he does not mention it - by several leading physicists and, indeed, Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal confirms this. Like many greek classical philosophers, from Plato to Epicurus, postman excercises healthy doubt and merely questions the present. Not all change is good. I also found the book to be very well written, erudite and humorous.
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Summary: Postman Delivers!
Review: This is my third Postman book and I am still enthralled in the reading of his works. Mainly, I believe, because he writes with a particular verve that I find lacking in many of his contemporaries. His discourse covers a wide range of topics, some of them superficially, but all of them intended to support his thesis: children are losing their childhood; and meaning needs to be revived in language, education, narrative, and culture. He is iconoclastic. Even though it is possible to read his book in a cursory manner, don't fault the easily accessible work as trite. Postman's criticism is erudite, precise and well-articulated. I hope he doesn't stop writing. His voice needs to continue.
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