Neil Postman - The Disappearance of Childhood (1982)

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Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. From a biological point of view it is inconceivable that any culture will forget that it needs to reproduce itself. But it is quite possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children. Unlike infancy, childhood is a social artifact, not a biological category.

Neil Postman

The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.

Neil Postman

Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.

Neil Postman

The shock of twentieth-century technology numbed our brains and we are just beginning to notice the spiritual and social debris that our technology has strewn about us.

Neil Postman

Printing links the present with forever. It carries personal identity into realms unknown.

Neil Postman

Reading is the scourge of childhood because, in a sense, it creates adulthood.

Neil Postman