http://www.deutsche-bank.de/db/ahg/postm_pd.htm (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
(WAV-Audiofile, 500 KB)
Neil Postman
was born in New York City. He received his Doctoral Degree from
Columbia University in 1958 and has taught at New York University
for 33 years. He is Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication
at NYU and Professor of Media Ecology.
He is the
author of eighteen books including Language in America,
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (with Charles Weingartner),
Teaching as a Conserving Activity, The Disappearance
of Childhood, Conscientious Objections, and Amusing
Ourselves to Death. This last book has been translated into
eight languages and has sold 200,000 copies worldwide.
His articles,
of which over 100 have been published, have appeared in The
New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Saturday
Review, The Harvard Education Review, The Washington
Post, The L.A. Times, Stern and Le Monde.
He has lectured all over the world, and in 1985, gave the keynote
address at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In 1986, Postman was given
the George Orwell Award for Clarity in Language by the National
Council of Teachers of English.
For ten
years, he was the editor of Et Cetera, the journal of General
Semantics. He is the holder of the Christian Lindback Award for
excellence in teaching. In 1988, he was given the Distinguished
Professor Award by New York University. His most recent books
(for Knopf and Viking, respectively) are Technopoly and
How to Watch a Television News Show (with Steve Powers).
In the
spring of 1991, he was the Laurence Lombard Visiting Professor
of The Press and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of
Gevernment at Harvard University. In 1993, he was appointed a
University Professor, a unique honor held by only six professors
in the university.
The Multiple Dangers of Multiple Media
