Marshall McLuhan, a media theorist, taught alongside Postman at the Fordham University Graduate School of Education. In addition to his career as a college educator, Postman spent four years as director of the School of Communications at New York University. Postman was a writing instructor at Ohio State University in the 1960s and early 1970s. In addition, he taught at Yale University, Cornell University, the City University of New York, and New York University.

We may be surrounded by screens, but his words continue to remind us that we are more than the images they reflect. Neil Postman wrote about the television age, but he captured the essence of all media revolutions: they promise connection and often deliver confusion. I was in college, flipping through a used copy in a dimly lit campus bookstore, drawn in by the strange cover and even stranger title. His work is still relevant because we have more reason than ever to heed his warnings, not because we disregarded them.

However, that caution also contains hope. Neil Postman was posing a deeply human question rather than merely criticizing television or foreseeing the growth of the internet: what happens when the tools we develop to make our lives better start to subtly alter our thoughts, emotions, and interpersonal relationships? That conviction now strikes a deep chord. He thought we could grow, change, and take back control. That book sat with me for weeks – not because it was easy to digest, but because it kept echoing in my head long after I’d closed it.

What did he think about communication? He maintained that by highlighting the dramatic and spectacular, newspapers and widely distributed magazines misrepresent the news, leaving the average person perplexed about what is truly significant. Who was Walter Lippmann? ” In his view, technology had become society’s new religion, with technocrats its priesthood. One of the most significant public figures of the 20th century, Lippmann was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who spent a lot of time discussing how the media shapes public opinion.

Consider how frequently we come across viral posts or breaking news alerts that disappear hours later, leaving nothing but confusion in their wake. His nostalgia for print culture wasn’t about rejecting progress but protecting depth. He worried that when information overloads us, we lose the ability to make sense of it. We wouldn’t be able to discern what really matters because it would make us nervous and preoccupied. Postman predicted that we would not become wiser if we lived in a sea of data.

Reading him again today feels like a reminder to reclaim slowness as a form of self-respect. The fact that Postman’s criticism originated from a place of concern sets him apart from straightforward pessimists.