R U there?
Somewhere on my long and winding road to enlightenment, I read that the invention of the printing press was said to have destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration. After doing a bit of research, I remembered my source for this kernel of knowledge, and can attribute it to Neil Postman. He was a prominent American educator and media critic who was also a successful (and proliferate) writer. A common theme for Postman was rapidly changing technology and how it relates to communication and social interaction. More specifically — television and its demeaning effects on political discourse and education. There are many compelling passages in Postman’s work, but I am captivated by the following excerpt from a speech he gave at a meeting of the German Informatics Society, sponsored by IBM-Germany. “Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not alway