Neil Postman, RIP

Media theorist Neil Postman is dead at age 72, from lung cancer. Postman, probably best-known for the horrible Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, exemplified a perspective about cultural production and consumption that's is virtually the opposite of the one taken in Reason.

He consistently fretted about the media's vast power over audiences and, in books such as Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, railed against any number of technological innovations that have made people's lives much better off and, more important, freer. His point of view, widely shared by many conservatives and liberals, especially when it comes to fears of a "debased" popular culture, will live on for a very long time.

Read his NY Times obit here.