Several years ago I got hooked on the wisdom of a writer named Neil Postman. He was a college professor at New York University. A dear friend of mine, Ross Baron, who is brilliant in his own right, had alerted me to the value of Postman’s writings. That same summer, I read seven of Postman’s books, including The Disappearance of Childhood, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Conscientious Objections, How to Watch TV News, Technopoly, The End of Education, and Building a Bridge to the 18th Century. Postman’s writings were mind-expanding and fun to read.
Although Postman informed my thinking in many areas, one thing that stands out to me concerns his argument that being amazed by technology or media does not equate to truly understanding them. He was critical of how society often becomes dazzled by new innovations—fascinated by their novelty and power—without critically examining their deeper implications. In works like Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly, he warned that technological advancements, particularly in media, could shape thought and culture in ways people do not always recognize. His core message was that just because something is impressive or entertaining does not automatically equate to being beneficial or leading to greater wisdom. True understanding requires critical thinking, not just passive consumption.
I’ve tried to remember that as I ponder the rise of newer technologies. Right now, AI is front and center. Everyone is talking about it. It’s still in its embryonic stages, but people are using it. Some of my own students use it. In fact, some of my students actually use AI (probably ChatGPT) to do their thinking for them, writing their Learning Journals for them – which is easy to tell because such writings tend to talk in a roundabout way what I taught them that week, but the specificity is always lacking.
Reliance on artificial intelligence to do our thinking for us is efficient but not effective in empowering us to use our own gray matter. I believe the irony is that when we develop a dependency on artificial intelligence, our own internal intelligence, such as it is, becomes uninspiring, flaccid, and spiritless. Indeed, I could say that to the degree we succumb to the use of artificial intelligence is the degree, ironically, that our own intelligence becomes artificial.
