Twitter Book Club: Neil Postman (1992) Technopoly - ch8

Invisible Technologies

"our most powerful ideological instrument is the technology of language itself. Language is pure ideology." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twitterrificanderscj
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"In English grammar, for example, there are always subjects who act, and verbs which are their actions, and objects... http://tl.gd/90tmp1less than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"If the scientific outlook seems natural to you, as it does to me, it is because our language makes it appear so." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"To what extent has statistics been allowed entry to places where it does not belong?" Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"There is no such thing as 'intelligence.' It is a word, not a thing, and a word of a very high order of abstractio... http://tl.gd/90u15iless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"The idea that intelligence can be quantitatively measured along a single linear scale has caused untold harm to ou... http://tl.gd/90u3h7less than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"Technopoly searches for a source of authority and finds it in the idea of statistical objectivity." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"Of what earthly use is it to declare that one group of people is smarter than another?" Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"in a culture that reveres statistics, we can never be sure what sort of nonsense will lodge in people's heads." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"In the American Technopoly, public opinion is a yes or no answer to an unexamined question." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"A question may 'invite' an opinion, but it also may modify and recast it; we might better say that people do not e... http://tl.gd/90ufivless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"When statistics and computers are joined, volumes of garbage are generated in public discourse." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"If we learn that one out of every four black males between the ages of twenty and thirty has spent some time in pr... http://tl.gd/90ulkvless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the ... http://tl.gd/90un9oless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"One manages, in other words, by the 'numbers' and by being removed from the everyday realities of production." Postmanless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"Technique, like any other technology, tends to function independently of the system it serves. It becomes autonomo... http://tl.gd/90utnsless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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"When a method of doing things becomes so deeply associated with an institution that we no longer know which came f... http://tl.gd/90uvetless than a minute ago via Twittelatoranderscj
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This, I believe, is the most powerful chapter in this book. This concept of "invisible technologies" has profoundly more control of us than the devices we see, use, and readily identify.