Postman worries that we may be amusing ourselves to death. A social critic and communications theorist, he is the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity, a call for radical education reform written with Charles Weingartner in the late ’60s; Teaching as a Conserving Activity, promoting a stable learning environment to counter the fragmented education offered by television and electronic media; and The Disappearance of Childhood, a look at the negative impact on childhood of television and other entertainment media. Postman challenges our habits of discourse using insights gleaned from psychology, history, semantics, and popular culture in his sharp essays on contemporary popular culture. Recent books include Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technologyand Conscientious Objections: Stirring up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education.
