Neil Postman vs. Marshall McLuhan
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Neil Postman
1931 – 2003
Neil Postman was an American author, educator, media theorist, and cultural critic who eschewed digital technology, including personal computers and mobile devices, and was critical of the use of personal computers in schools. He is best known for 20 books about technology and education, including Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1970), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).
"The question, "How well does one read?" is a bad question... essentially unanswerable. A more proper question is "How well does one read poetry, or history, or …"
Marshall McLuhan
1911 – 1980
Herbert Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. Raised in Winnipeg, McLuhan studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his teaching career as a professor of English at several universities in the United States and Canada before moving to the University of Toronto in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. He is known as "the father of media studies".
"My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I…"
Connections
Both wrote about: