Neil Post­man was Pro­fes­sor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at New York Uni­ver­sity until his death in 2003. He wrote many won­der­fully insight­ful and thought-​​provoking arti­cles and books about tele­vi­sion, edu­ca­tion, tech­nol­ogy and child­hood. I recently came across a speech he gave in 1998 on “Five things we need to know about tech­no­log­i­cal change”. Here is an online tran­script. The five things are:

1. That we always pay a price for tech­nol­ogy; the greater the tech­nol­ogy, the greater the price.
2. That there are always win­ners and losers, and that the win­ners always try to per­suade the losers that they are really winners.
3. That there is embed­ded in every great tech­nol­ogy an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal or social prej­u­dice. Some­times that bias is greatly to our advan­tage. Some­times it is not.
4. That tech­no­log­i­cal change is not addi­tive; it is eco­log­i­cal, which means, it changes every­thing and is, there­fore, too impor­tant to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates.
5. That tech­nol­ogy tends to become mythic; that is, per­ceived as part of the nat­ural order of things, and there­fore tends to con­trol more of our lives than is good for us.

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