Computers Are Merely Ingenious Devices

...there Must Be A Sequence To Learning, That Perseverance And A Certain Measure Of Perspiration Are Indispensable, That Individual Pleasures Must Frequently Be Submerged In The Interests Of Group Cohesion, And That Learning To Be Critical And To Think Conceptually And Rigorously Do Not Come Easily To The Young But Are Hard-fought Victories.

What The Advertiser Needs To Know Is Not What Is Right About The Product But What Is Wrong About The Buyer.

Embedded In Every Technology There Is A Powerful Idea, Sometimes Two Or Three Powerful Ideas. Like Language Itself, A Technology Predisposes Us To Favor And Value Certain Perspectives And Accomplishments And To Subordinate Others. Every Technology Has A Philosophy, Which Is Given Expression In How The Technology Makes People Use Their Minds, In How It Codifies The World, In Which Of Our Senses It Amplifies, In Which Of Our Emotional And Intellectual Tendencies It Disregards.

The Line-by-line, Sequential, Continuous Form Of The Printed Page Slowly Began To Lose Its Resonance As A Metaphor Of How Knowledge Was To Be Acquired And How The World Was To Be Understood. "knowing" The Facts Took On A New Meaning, For It Did Not Imply That One Understood Implications, Background, Or Connections. Telegraphic Discourse Permitted No Time For Historical Perspectives And Gave No Priority To The Qualitative. To The Telegraph, Intelligence Meant Knowing Of Lots Of Things, Not Knowing About Them.

The Idea Of Taking What People Call The 'entertainment Culture' As A Focus Of Study, Including Historical Perspective, Is Not A Bad Idea.