Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Postman: digital information has little to do with our real problems

Among the implications of these beliefs is a loss of confidence in human judgment and subjectivity.  We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation...

The computer argues, to put it baldly, that the most serious problems confronting us at both personal and public levels require technical solutions through fast access to information otherwise unavailable.  I would argue that this is, on the face of it, nonsense.  Our most serious problems are not technical, nor do they arise from inadequate information.  If a nuclear catastrophe occurs it shall not be because of inadequate information.  Where people are dying of starvation, it does not occur because of inadequate information.  If families break up, children are mistreated, crime terrorises a city, education is impotent, it does not happen because of inadequate information.  Mathematical equations, instantaneous communication, and vast quantities of information have nothing whatever to do with any of these problems.  And the computer is useless in addressing them.

Technopoly, p.118&119

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