And no, I'm not talking about the Cubs' loss in gm 1 of the NLCS.
Rather, I found out yesterday that Neil Postman has passed away, and although his passing has not attracted the attention that Walter Ong and Edward Said have, he was arguably as important as either of them, at least from the perspective of technology and media studies. In many ways, Postman was the bridge between the early technology thinkers (Ong, McLuhan, et al.) and the Internet generation.
I met Neil in 1995, I think, when he visited UTA to deliver a talk based on some of the material from The Ends of Education. Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly aroused my interest the most at the time, and I remember Neil taking the time to sit (in the UTA student center/cafeteria?) with a group of us graduate students, and to talk with us about those books, as well as a range of issues that I would now understand as media ecology. I never ask scholars to sign my books, but I did ask Neil to sign Technopoly for me. He was one of the people who made it possible for me to imagine myself as a media/technology expert inside of academia.
Addendum: One of his former students, Jay Rosen, has posted some of his recollections and thoughts about Postman's career and contributions.
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