The Judgement Of Thamus Neil Postman Analysis

Analysis: “The Judgment of Thamus” by Neil Postman Professor and writer, Neil Postman, in his story, “The Judgment of Thamus” claims that today’s technology has both positive and negative effects on society and the world as a whole. Postman starts out writing about the positives and negatives of technology but slowly drifts towards the negative side, attempting to persuade the audience into thinking that technology is harmful to society. Postman’s claim that technology has a multitude of negative effects on society is an overreaction that relies on a truly pessimistic world view. First, Postman introduces opinions of well known people such as Plato, Marshall McLuhan, and Freud to convince the audience that the arguments he states are valid. He builds a blunt view of technology by including some of these views on technology. For example, he includes Freud’s opinion on technology, “We nevertheless rear no more children than in the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have created …show more content…
He states, “…in the long run, television may bring a gradual end to the careers of schoolteachers, since school was an invention of the printing press and must stand or fall on the issue of how much importance the printed word has” (Postman 365). Postman is trying to say that schoolteachers will no longer be able to do their job with the invention of television and new technologies. Additionally, he adds, “There is something perverse about schoolteachers’ being enthusiastic about what is happening,” (Postman 365) meaning that schoolteachers are perverse by being excited about new technologies. This reveals Postman’s hopeless view on technology, since teachers can deal with the new technology and use it to their advantage in education. For example, teachers can show educational videos on television to educate students, which may help some students learn