A few months ago I mentioned that Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, provided brilliant, and still thoroughly relevant insights into how media and technology affect us, and more broadly culture, in ways that we don't realize. The podcast linked below, Your Undivided Attention's "The Man Who Predicted The Downfall of Thinking", focuses on Postman's unique ability to grasp the dangers that technology can bring. The podcast was as satisfying and educational as anything I've heard in months.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-man-who-predicted-the-downfall-of-thinking/id1460030305?i=1000698059945

It can also be found on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPr9h-yb1rU

Here's a gem from it. Postman urges society to ask the following 7 essential questions regarding any new technology:

1. What is the problem to which a technology claims to be the solution?

2. Whose problem is it?

3. What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?

4. Which people and institutions will be most harmed?

5. What changes in language are being promoted?

6. What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result? 

7. What alternative media might be made from a technology?

Given the enormous financial and national security incentives (for corporations and countries) to roll out new technology, and provide the consumer with the shiniest new object to covet, I have no illusions that this invaluable checklist has been discussed by the Magnificent Seven tech corporations as it isn't conducive to building shareholder value!!

And I'll leave you with an Aldous Huxley quote: "People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacity to think." 

Peter T.