Ethical Reflection: Postman’s Faustian Bargain

New technology is a kind of Faustian bargain. It always gives us something, but it always takes away something important. That’s true of the alphabet, and the printing press, and telegraph, right up through the computer. – Neil Postman

A Faustian bargain is deal with the devil, a pact with Satan, an agreement that allows you to have anything you've ever wanted. And in exchange for extreme wealth or power, all you have to do is hand your soul over to the devil for eternity. The popular theme of the Faustian bargain started in folktales, but its stories are still told in popular films, music, comic strips, books, and television programs today.

          McLuhan’s probes stimulated others to ponder whether specific media environments were beneficial or destructive for those immersed in them. Neil Postman founded the media ecology program at New York University and was regarded by many as McLuhan’s heir apparent. Like McLuhan, Postman believed that the forms of media regulate and even dictate what kind of content the form of a given medium can carry. For example, smoke signals implicitly discourage philosophical argument.

New technology always presents us with a Faustian bargain – a potential deal with the devil. Postman’s believed that the primary  task of media ecology is to make moral judgments.

A new technology always presents us with a Faustian bargain – a potential deal with the devil. As Postman was fond of saying, “Technology giveth and technology taketh away… A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided”.

The environment of television turns everything into entertainment and everyone into juvenile adults. Triviality trumps seriousness.

A video clip inserted above  is about Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995