“A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.”

— Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. Printing created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Printing made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into an exercise in superstition. Printing assisted in the growth of the nation-state but, in so doing, made patriotism into a sordid if not a murderous emotion. Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological change, in other words, always results in winners and losers.

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American writer and academic 1931–2003

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“A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided.”

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