A bridge from the Enlightenment Building a Bridge to the 18th
Century Dr. Neil Postman New York: Vintage Books, 1999 My mom
has this eerie ability to locate little appreciated books with
small popularity that turn out to be guidepost works toward the
new culture of reason and liberty. Building a Bridge is one such
book. Dr. Postman (1931-2003) was a professor who lectured at
New York University and wrote several books on culture and the
sociological implications of technology. In Bridge, he conveys
the importance of the Enlightenment (flowering in the 18th
century) to the 21st century, especially in language and
writing. To what extent do new media enhance or diminish our
moral sense, our capacity for goodness? — Dr. Neil Postman
Postman is a white knight crusading quietly on the horse of "the
examined life" and the life of the mind, the life worth living.
He starts with anecdotes of the current state of knowledge, or
shall we say ignorance, of Americans. He heard on the radio
somewhere between 35 and 62 perc