In 1985, historian Melvin Kranzberg of the Georgia Institute of Technology summed up what he had learned about technology during his long career.

"Kranzberg's Six Laws," as they've come to be known, are still a useful guide to thinking about technology today.

Here they are ... First Law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

I’ve been thinking about this thread since last night, and, not surprisingly, I think Illich and Ellul can help us here. But first an anecdote … 1/x

https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/1510072382412800007

About a year ago, a grad student told me about how a young colleague in his lab died suddenly at their desk. As he and two or three others huddled to talk and console one another, one person in the group hesitated. 2/x

A while ago, I spoke with a friend of Ivan Illich who shared a brief anecdote that has stayed with me. The two were taking a walk in between sessions of a conference on education. The friend was a life-long educator. Illich was famously critical of how we do schooling. 1/x As they talked, Illich asked "Why do we think we need to be educated?" The friend presumed Illich was narrowly referring to his usual target, modern compulsory schooling. But he wasn't. 2/x

Quick thought on journalism, digital media, etc.

The standard pre-digital view of journalism included the assumption that journalism supplied information you couldn’t get otherwise because of lack of access, etc. 1/x Its function was to uncover and report, assuming a measure of information scarcity. Data generation is foregrounded, narrative function is suppressed. 2/x

A few selections from the first chapter of McLuhan's Understanding Media for the sake of filling out the line we all think we know: "the medium is the message." 1/x McLuhan, Understanding Media. 2/x

The concluding chapter of Neil Postman's Technopoly was titled "The Loving Resistance Fighter." It featured a list of conveniently tweet-sized characteristics of those who resist American Technopoly. They are those who ... 1/ ... pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked, and why. 2/