Postman's View (According to Lanham)
Lanham points out that Niel Postman views the adoption of new technologies of information dissemination with Luddite disdain. We get a glimpse of this disdain in Postman's comment on the telegrraph:
The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, intorducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity (Amusing Ourselves to Death 65)Lanham further points out that Postman looks at inofrmation as either good or bad. The bad kind of information is that which caters to "novelty, interest, and curiosity," the kind electronic communication (specifcally TV) serves up. Good information, on the other hand, is print-based information, purposive, tied to action. (239-40)Lanham disagrees.
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