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TED Talk: "How language shapes the way we think"

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TED Talk: "How language shapes the way we think"

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How Language Shapes the Way We Think | Lera Boroditsky | TED

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Interview: "One general assumption about language... Is that language is primarily a means of communication... Probably that's totally false."

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Interview: "One general assumption about language... Is that language is primarily a means of communication... Probably that's totally false."

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Chomsky on Language, thought and interpretations of reality.

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In pages 1-20, we are introduced to Winston Smith and the dystopia world of "1984," where: War Is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.

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In the Appendix, we learn about the Principles of Newspeak.

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What "Orwellian" really means - Noah Tavlin

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Political comic: "George Orwell's '1984' Sales Zoom"

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Political comic: "George Orwell's '1984' Sales Zoom"

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FREEDOM OF RELIGION, SPEECH, PRESS, ASSEMBLY, AND PETITION

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791. The first 10 amendments form the Bill of Rights

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

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A deep dive into the First Amendment, which guarantees US citizens freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. In this video, Kim discusses the First Amendment with scholars Erwin Chemerinsky and Michael McConnell. To read more about the First Amendment, visit the National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution.

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You have not been
Paying attention
Paying attention
Paying attention
Paying attention

(https://genius.com/Radiohead-2-2-5-lyrics)

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𝓛𝔂𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓼 𝓝 𝓶𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬

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Radiohead - 2+2=5  (Live) – Lyrics video

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"When someone says I don't care about privacy 'cause I've got nothing to hide..."

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"When someone says I don't care about privacy 'cause I've got nothing to hide..."

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Snowden on freedom of Speech -  Video Conference at McGill University, Montreal

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'Truth isn't truth': Giuliani trumps 'alternative facts' with new Orwellian outburst

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President's lawyer keeps up attack on Mueller investigation, leading NBC host Chuck Todd to say: 'This is going to become a bad meme'

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Letter to the Editor: "Internet Hate Speech"

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Letter to the Editor: "Internet Hate Speech"

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Re " Hate Speech on Facebook " (editorial, May 31):

The issue of hate on the Internet is hardly restricted to misogyny, as despicable as online attacks on women certainly are. The Internet is a viral breeding ground for anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and many other categories of attacks on people. Despite the schoolyard adage about "sticks and stones," hate speech does cause hurt, and, as we have witnessed too many times in society, can and does have its real-world victims.

More generally, online hate pollutes the Internet environment, from Twitter to YouTube to the online comment sections of news sites. To its credit, Facebook has been an industry leader in addressing online hate, participating in an experts' working group convened by the Anti-Defamation League.

The company immediately admitted its lapses on the women's hate issue, and is now working to come up with solutions to other forms of hate speech on its pages, including Holocaust denial.

With luck, the recent incident will serve as a clarion call - not only to Facebook, but to other social networking sites as well - that they have a vested interest in promoting a civil, safe Internet. All responsible Internet hosts should consider a carefully calibrated approach that balances the interests of free speech with the imperative of providing a hate-free environment for all users.

ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN
CHRISTOPHER WOLF
New York, May 31, 2013
The writers, national director and civil rights chairman, respectively, of the Anti-Defamation League, are the authors of the forthcoming book "Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet."

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Re " Hate Speech on Facebook " (editorial, May 31): The issue of hate on the Internet is hardly restricted to misogyny, as despicable as online attacks on women certainly are. The Internet is a viral breeding ground for anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and many other categories of attacks on people.

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As we count down to the release of , hitting theaters Friday, September 16, we'll be featuring one post a day this week as a part of our special #SnowdenSeries. We'll discuss everything from data retention to the history behind the man himself, Edward Snowden, so you'll have the full rundown of online security and what it means for you in 2016.

Edward Snowden has made it clear that privacy is fundamental for freedom; free speech is no exception. Recent studies have confirmed this to be true. Because of government surveillance, our privacy is steadily shrinking. So how does that government surveillance threaten free speech?

Speculation about how government surveillance alters human behavior is not a new phenomenon. It's been a mainstay in popular culture since George Orwell penned It was Orwell who said, "[i] f liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." New research suggests that government surveillance is eating away at that liberty.

A study published by Elizabeth Stoycheff in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly examined how government surveillance impacts social media behavior. The results were chilling, if not surprising.

The study draws its conclusions from a survey of 255 people, randomly selected to reflect the demographics of the United States population. Survey participants answered a questionnaire about their personalities, social media use, news consumption, political stances, and their feelings towards government surveillance.

Following the questionnaire, participants were shown a fake Facebook post about continued airstrikes in Iraq and Syria and asked how willing they would be to share their own thoughts on the story. They were also asked how they thought other Americans felt about the same subject. Some of the participants were shown a message before they viewed the fake Facebook post, reminding them they may be subject to government surveillance.

Interestingly, Stoycheff found that those who feel that they have "nothing to hide" are most likely to engage in self-censorship . In fact, her study revealed that government surveillance silences dissent online . When people who support government surveillance "perceive they are being monitored, they readily conform their behavior-expressing opinions when they are in the majority, and suppressing them when they're not," Stoycheff discovered. Orwell referred to this "groupthink."

Elizabeth Stoycheff, Edward Snowden, and George Orwell all agree that privacy and free speech are a package deal. Stoycheff referred to minority views as "the bedrock of democratic discourse." When the government silences them, though, democratic discourse suffers. Snowden goes so far as to classify privacy as the "fountainhead of all rights" and "the right to a free mind." Orwell alluded to the silencing of dissent when he suggested that "[u]npopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban."

Consequently, his magnum opus, , explicitly asserts that on the subject of privacy and free speech, one cannot exist without the other.

has become so synonymous with the dystopian surveillance state that references to overarching government surveillance practices are commonly labeled as "Orwellian." Joe Cannataci, the UN's privacy chief, thinks we've now exceeded the surveillance state Orwell warned about . When comparing the surveillance state of the UK to , Cannataci contends that " today there are many parts of the English countryside where there are more cameras than George Orwell could ever have imagined. So the situation in some cases is far worse already."

Cannataci also links Snowden to Orwell. He states that "Orwell foresaw a technology that was controlling. In our case, we are looking at a technology that is ever-developing, and ever-developing possibly more sinister capabilities." According to Cannataci, this present reality makes Snowden's revelations crucial because they confirmed "what has been going on, and the extent to which it has gone out of control."

While the suppression of free speech through government surveillance produces feelings of dejection, Cannataci may offer hope. As the UN's privacy chief, he is setting the standard for digital privacy rights. Cannataci has the power to review government policies and legislation on the collection of digital communications, identify cases where invasion of privacy occurs without justification, help governments develop best surveillance practices, inform the private sector on their responsibilities in upholding human rights, and ensure that all government surveillance policies and legislation maintain human rights.

Stoycheff, like Snowden, confirmed something we already believed to be true. And just as we should have the right to know what our government knows about us, we should have the right to free speech. That free speech cannot exist without privacy, and if we accept the status the quo of our surveillance state, a more Orwellian future awaits.
Want to learn even more about Edward Snowden? Check out the fifth and final installment of our #SnowdenSeries, tomorrow.

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How Government Surveillance Threatens Free Speech - StrongVPN

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As we count down to the release of , hitting theaters Friday, September 16, we'll be featuring one post a day this week as a part of our special #SnowdenSeries. We'll discuss everything from data retention to the history behind the man himself, Edward Snowden, so you'll have the full rundown of online security and what it means for you in 2016.

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Aldous Huxley, author of "A Brave New World," writes a letter to George Orwell in which he praise the author while arguing for a different vision of our future

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Aldous Huxley, author of "A Brave New World," writes a letter to George Orwell in which he praise the author while arguing for a different vision of our future

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In October of 1949, a few months after publication of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he received a letter from fellow author Aldous Huxley, a man who, 17 years previous, had seen his own nightmarish vision of society published in the form of Brave New World, a book also now considered a classic. Having recently finished reading Orwell's novel, Huxley had a few words to say. What begins as a letter of praise soon becomes a brief comparison of the two novels, and an explanation as to why Huxley believes his own, earlier work to be a more realistic prediction.

Trivia: In 1917, long before he wrote this letter, Aldous Huxley briefly taught Orwell French at Eton.

Letter taken from the More Letters of Note book. More info here.

( Image: George Orwell (via) & Aldous Huxley (via.)

Wrightwood. Cal.
21 October, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your publishers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much reading and consulting of references; and since poor sight makes it necessary for me to ration my reading, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals --- the ultimate revolution? The first hints of a philosophy of the ultimate revolution --- the revolution which lies beyond politics and economics, and which aims at total subversion of the individual's psychology and physiology --- are to be found in the Marquis de Sade, who regarded himself as the continuator, the consummator, of Robespierre and Babeuf. The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it. Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occasion recently to look into the history of animal magnetism and hypnotism, and have been greatly struck by the way in which, for a hundred and fifty years, the world has refused to take serious cognizance of the discoveries of Mesmer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Partly because of the prevailing materialism and partly because of prevailing respectability, nineteenth-century philosophers and men of science were not willing to investigate the odder facts of psychology for practical men, such as politicians, soldiers and policemen, to apply in the field of government. Thanks to the voluntary ignorance of our fathers, the advent of the ultimate revolution was delayed for five or six generations. Another lucky accident was Freud's inability to hypnotize successfully and his consequent disparagement of hypnotism. This delayed the general application of hypnotism to psychiatry for at least forty years. But now psycho-analysis is being combined with hypnosis; and hypnosis has been made easy and indefinitely extensible through the use of barbiturates, which induce a hypnoid and suggestible state in even the most recalcitrant subjects.

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war --- in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sincerely,

Aldous Huxley

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In October of 1949, a few months after publication of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four , he received a letter from fellow author Aldous Huxley, a man who, 17 years previous, had seen his own nightmarish vision of society published in the form of Brave New World , a book also now considered a classic.

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"Yes — we’re talking Egg Boy, the Australian teenager who went wildly viral after he smashed a raw egg into the back of right-wing politician’s balding head over the weekend."

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"Yes — we’re talking Egg Boy, the Australian teenager who went wildly viral after he smashed a raw egg into the back of right-wing politician’s balding head over the weekend."

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Egg Boy Gives His First Post-Egging Interview

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Wheatus of "Teenage Dirtbag" fame has labelled him a "Hero of The Earth." He has been honored in a huge mural in his hometown. And over the past few days, outlets from the Washington Post to NPR to the New York Times have covered his actions.

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Satirical infographic on Campus Free Speech

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Satirical infographic on Campus Free Speech

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Free speech has become an increasingly contentious issue on college campuses as students, faculty, and the national media debate whether schools should impose restrictions on things like protests, guest speakers, and course material. The Onion takes a look at the pros and cons of free speech on college campuses.

PRO

Provides students the opportunity to hear new arguments that bolster their existing beliefs

Promotes diversity of backlash

Debating controversial ideas reduces time students would otherwise spend experimenting sexually

Connects study of history to real world by inviting Nazis to campus

Might be people's last opportunity to stand on a desk

CON

You can really stick it to those delicate liberal snowflake rape survivors

Gives students false impression that solving problems in real world involves free and open discussion

Free speech includes dry witticisms and puns

Permits students to protest Columbus Day in the dining hall when you're just trying to eat lunch

Bullhorn feedback a real issue

Provides never-ending source of material for hand-wringing New York Times columnists

Propagates illusion that others care what you have to say

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Pros And Cons Of Free Speech On College Campuses

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Free speech has become an increasingly contentious issue on college campuses as students, faculty, and the national media debate whether schools should impose restrictions on things like protests, guest speakers, and course material. The Onion takes a look at the pros and cons of free speech on college campuses.

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Q & A with Douglas Rushkoff: "How Digital Technology Is Destroying Out Freedom"

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Q & A with Douglas Rushkoff: "How Digital Technology Is Destroying Out Freedom"

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There's a whole genre of literature called " technological utopianism." It's an old idea, but it reemerged in the early days of the internet. The core belief is that the world will become happier and freer as science and technology develops.

The role of the internet and social media in everything from the spread of terrorist propaganda to the rise of authoritarianism has dampened much of the enthusiasm about technology, but the spirit of techno-utopianism lives on, especially in places like Silicon Valley.

Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at Queens College in New York, is the latest to push back against the notion that technology is driving social progress. His new book, , argues that digital technology in particular is eroding human freedom and destroying communities.

We're social creatures, Rushkoff writes in his book, yet we live in a consumer democracy that restricts human connection and stokes "whatever appetites guarantee the greatest profit." If we want to reestablish a sense of community in this digital world, he argues, we'll have to become conscious users of our technology - not "passive objects" as we are now.

But what does that mean in practical terms? Technology is everywhere, and we're all more or less dependent upon it - so how do we escape the pitfalls?

I spoke to Rushkoff about this and much more. I wanted to know why he thinks the revolutionary potential of the internet was destroyed by commerce, why the tools that ought to liberate us often imprison us instead, and what we can do to restore a sense of connection in a world of alienating technologies.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

You write in the book that our society is being threatened by a "vast antihuman infrastructure that undermines our ability to connect." What does that mean?

Douglas Rushkoff

What I mean is that before digital technology, we were already on the brink of extreme alienation. We already had an economic system that was starting to burn itself out, that was built increasingly on constant consumption and the exploitation of labor.

And then digital technology came later in the century and offered an opportunity to do things in a different way. It offered the possibility of retrieving a common space and a way for people to share and connect. It was a chance to build an economy that wasn't based purely on the extraction of resources and capital.

But that's not what happened. Instead, digital technology was used to double down on industrialism. And industrialism was always about getting the human being out of the equation. It was about assembly lines and automation and separating workers from the value they're creating. It was about business owners paying their workers less money and gaining more control over them at the same time.

Once we decided that digital technology would be used in further service of that, in further service of extracting value from labor and manipulating consumers into buying stuff they don't need or doing behaviors that aren't in their best interests, we created a worse monster than we had before.

So I'm not saying that we invented this anti-human agenda with digital technology, but that we're using digital technology to perpetuate an anti-human agenda that was already there.

Sean Illing

At some point, technology ceased to be a tool to help us get what we want and instead became the only thing we actually want. We stopped using it and it started using us.

Douglas Rushkoff

I think that's basically right. In some ways, we're all hostage to our technologies, or we're simply at the mercy of this system. We're being steamrolled by our devices, and the result is a kind of emotional slavery. And we know that billions of dollars are going into applying everything, every nasty trick we know about behavioral finance, to the digital realm.

This is what I mean when I call digital technology "anti-human." If we were using digital and behavioral technologies to help people eat better or not smoke, then at least we could be arguing that it's intended to help people. When we're using technology to get people to revert to their most reptilian impulses, to get them to buy stuff they don't need or to react angrily to stories, we're in deep trouble.

"We're being steamrolled by our devices, and the result is a kind of emotional slavery"

Sean Illing

You argue that using technology in this way, and really we're talking about algorithms here, effectively destroys human autonomy. Can you lay out the case you make in the book?

Douglas Rushkoff

The easiest way to understand what's happening is to think of something like autotuning. Autotuning works by quantizing the human voice into the particular correct notes. Without getting too artsy here, I'll just say this process shaves off the weird peculiarities that make humans human. It strips human expression of its unique weirdness. It obliterates what makes us different from a machine, what makes life different from plastic.

In a more practical sense, the way it works with individuals is you go on a platform like Facebook, and Facebook is using data from your past to dump you into a statistical bucket. Once they know what bucket you're in, they do everything to keep you in that bucket and to make you behave in ways that are more consistent with all the things about that bucket.

So if they know there's an 80 percent chance you'll go on a diet next month based on your search habits, then they'll start peppering your newsfeed with articles and stories that are designed to get you to really go on that diet. So you'll see stories of people getting too fat or whatever. And that's to get you to behave more consistently with your statistical profile.

Sean Illing

The algorithm thing is tricky to me. On the one hand, algorithms are making our lives easier by predicting what we want and giving it to us. On the other hand, our wants are so manipulated, so curated, that at some point it's no longer a meaningful choice and the algorithms are just doing our thinking for us.

Douglas Rushkoff

And what if you don't want anything at all? That's the thing: That's not one of the choices you have online. So in that sense, they're not even giving us what we want. They're trying to trigger whatever they can get us to want.It's about stoking consumption, about convincing us that we need another gadget, another toy, another device that will make us happy.

Sean Illing

And part of your argument is that these forces are turning us into atoms of consumption and consequently eroding our connections to other people.

Douglas Rushkoff

Right, and again, the roots of this go back way before digital technology emerged. TV and consumer advertising wants us to be unsatisfied and disconnected from other people so that we look to products to fill that void. And products can never fill that void, which is great for the marketer, because then we'll keep buying stuff to fill an ever-expanding void.

So digital technology comes along and, rather than trying to replace our human connections with product purchases, it mediates our human connections in ways that make them less satisfying. So if you engage with someone, certainly via text and email, you're never going to get fulfilled. If you engage with them even on Skype or video, you don't get the same rapport.

When you engage with someone in real life, the oxytocin rushes through your blood when you see their pupils getting bigger and their breathing rate syncing up with yours. These are painstakingly evolved mechanisms for achieving social harmony. And we're losing them by spending all our time buying shit on Amazon or poring over our newsfeeds.

Sean Illing

Can we overcome the anti-human agenda embedded in our technology without also overturning the civilization that produced those technologies? Because we seem to be stuck in this paradigm. And the values of that paradigm are reflected in our technologies, so it's difficult to get rid of one without getting rid of the other.

Douglas Rushkoff

It is, isn't it? I mean, what do we go back to? People have been doing shitty things to each other since the beginning of time. The thing is, we've never quite had the capacity to destroy ourselves like we do today. And we're doing it in this slow, cigarette-like fashion by gradually eroding our connections to one another. This is what makes our technological threats so insidious.

But I think each of us, in our daily lives, can experience a different view of each other and humanity. There is a moment on the subway when you see a person and make eye contact and smile for a second. And I know right now it's the exception rather than the rule. And you're just like, "Oh, I'm never going to see that person again in my life, but there was something there, something real." And it feels exhilarating.

We have to build on these experiences because it's the only way to engender a real community over time. I've written previous books about how we need systemic changes to corporations and government regulations and tax policies and all that. But this book is more about the way individuals experience the world, and why we need to stop seeing the object of the game as trying to earn enough money to insulate ourselves from reality, and instead realize that that's not even possible.

I guess what I'm saying is that we've pushed far enough in this direction with mechanism and capitalism and industrial progress, and I believe we will be on the beginnings of a path toward something better if we start engaging with one another again and looking at each other and talking in real ways.

Sean Illing

Is capitalism the fundamental problem here? Because this seems to be baked into the argument you're making, and it's the primary force driving all these technologies.

Douglas Rushkoff

Capitalism is the actual problem. But it's not a matter of getting rid of capitalism so much as balancing capitalism with some other "ism." Capitalism was originally a way of getting funds to businesses that needed them in order to start up, and now businesses and people are serving capital. It's fine to capitalize a company. It's not fine to surrender an entire civilization to one financial principle.

Sean Illing

I guess this is where I have to push back a little, because I'm not sure capitalism can coexist with the sort of morality or ideology you're after here. Capitalism only works in a society drunk on consumerism, and consumerism is unavoidably "anti-human" in the way you've defined the term here.

Douglas Rushkoff

It's a fair point. Capitalism is the closest "ism" to mechanistic world domination. It views human beings as resources to be exploited, not served. It's inherently cannibalistic in that way. And it allows us to convince ourselves that we're actually advancing civilization when, in reality, we're destroying the very things that make civilization possible in the first place.

Sean Illing

I keep wondering what we're supposed to do. These digital technologies have uprooted us from each other, from our communities, and yet it feels unavoidable. How do we participate in this system without reinforcing it? How do we escape the machine?

Douglas Rushkoff

Slowly. There are a lot of people who don't want to believe that reconnecting with other people in real life will make a difference. And this sort of nihilism is part of the problem. If you really want to believe that you can't make a difference, if you really want to believe that connecting with other people in the real world is going to have no effect on the real world, then you're welcome to believe that. But you're wrong. You're absolutely wrong.

Every connection with other people is an opportunity for conspiracy. We have to believe that. We have to believe that gathering together locally can make a difference. If we stop believing that, then we're truly lost. Then humanity doesn't matter anymore. But I don't buy that. I think every classroom is an opportunity for conspiracy. Every town meeting, every street corner. I think it happens that way.

Sean Illing

Technology is going to progress whether we want it to or not. So how do we fold the human values we need into the technologies we're clearly going to keep building?

Douglas Rushkoff

Well, one way is if they are owned by the workers. I do believe that platform cooperatives offer an alternative to these platform monopolies. If the workers own the company, then they're going to care about how the company functions. Especially if it's local to them. It's going to matter in that way.

And then it comes down to whether or not people are willing to stand up for what it is that they believe in. When Google's workers walk out because they don't like the company's China policy, that's a good sign. That's the workers standing up saying, "No, fuck this, we won't be complicit." We need more of that.

Sean Illing

Does that mean you're optimistic about the future?

Douglas Rushkoff

I don't know if I'm optimistic, but I do feel hopeful. I think there is a strong possibility that we can avert the collapse of our civilization. But it starts with everyday people waking up and taking a stand.

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How digital technology is destroying our freedom

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There's a whole genre of literature called " technological utopianism." It's an old idea, but it reemerged in the early days of the internet. The core belief is that the world will become happier and freer as science and technology develops.

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TO call Neil Postman a critic of television would be as inadequate as calling Bishop Tutu a critic of apartheid or Jerry Falwell a critic of abortion. In Mr. Postman's view, the much-criticized medium is a peril to our society, our culture, our civilization. The theme of his 16th book, ''Amusing Ourselves to Death,'' is that television is bringing us speedily to the condition of the residents of Aldous Huxley's ''Brave New World,'' who were seduced into happy mindlessness. He writes: ''When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.''

Mr. Postman, a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University, emphasizes that what troubles him is not the widely lamented profusion of ''junk'' on television (''The best things on television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it''), but the medium itself. This offspring of the union of the telegraph and the photograph, he maintains, is destroying the ''serious and rational public conversation'' that was sustained for centuries by the printing press. He warns in the tones of Jeremiah that the ''Age of Exposition'' is being displaced by the ''Age of Show Business.''

When Mr. Postman contents himself with analyzing television's treatment of public affairs, politics, religion and education, he makes a sharp guide. Tuning in to the talk shows, for example, he observes how the medium itself discourages reflection. ''When a television show is in process, it is very nearly impermissible to say, 'Let me think about that' or 'I don't know' or 'What do you mean when you say . . .?' or 'From what sources does your information come?' This type of discourse not only slows down the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage.''

His comments on ''Sesame Street'' are especially provocative, if not entirely persuasive. He decries that much-acclaimed program for being an adversary of the classroom, because it stands for the proposition that education and entertainment are inseparable. He does not go very far into this intriguing issue, referring us instead to an earlier book, ''Teaching as a Conserving Activity,'' in which he examined the ''antagonistic nature of the two curriculums - television and school.'' Fair enough - but do we really ''now know that 'Sesame Street' encourages children to love school only if school is like 'Sesame Street' ''? From what sources does that information come?

Mr. Postman's method of discourse is not always up to the standards he champions. On the inviting subject of television evangelists, for example, he makes the unexceptionable, if unnecessary, observation that ''what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities.'' In building his case, however, he compares today's electronic preachers with those estimable evangelists of a century or two ago, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney. Although he notes in passing that such current-day preachers as Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson are probably no more ignorant than most earlier evangelicals, he does not take account of all that has happened to religion in America, quite apart from television, since Jonathan Edwards was in the pulpit.

Similarly, after a deserved skewering of the Presidential debates, with their attention to image and want of content, he offers in contrast the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It's rather like complaining that Harold Robbins is not Henry James. Where are the memorable debates in all the pretelevision decades after Lincoln met Douglas? Were the politicians of the pretelevision 1920's superior to those of the 1960's or 1970's? Is the level of political discourse today really worse than it has generally been? Are Americans ''quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world?'' From what sources does that information come? Mr. Postman goes back to the highly literate population of Revolutionary America to show how we have fallen, a strikingly unhistorical tactic. His picture of life before the coming of the tube is highly idealized, and like many critics of popular culture, he seems reluctant to say an unkind word about the mass audience to which television caters.

Mr. Postman's weakness for theorizing may be related to an understandable desire of professors of ''communications'' (in one incarnation, he was Professor of Media Ecology) to raise their novel specialty to the level of traditional academic subjects. He concludes his book with something of a commercial for his line of work, calling on the nation to devote itself to understanding the nature of the beast of television before we are devoured.

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TO call Neil Postman a critic of television would be as inadequate as calling Bishop Tutu a critic of apartheid or Jerry Falwell a critic of abortion. In Mr. Postman's view, the much-criticized medium is a peril to our society, our culture, our civilization.

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"Netflix's Bow to Saudi Censors Comes at a Cost to Free Speech"

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"Netflix's Bow to Saudi Censors Comes at a Cost to Free Speech"

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Mediator

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Netflix removed an episode of "Patriot Act" with the comedian Hasan Minhaj from its service in Saudi Arabia at the request of the government there. Credit Credit Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

Under Article 6, Paragraph 1 of Saudi Arabia's Anti-Cyber Crime Law, the following is punishable by up to five years in prison: "Production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy, through the information network or computers."

Think "First Amendment." Then invert it.

Last week, we learned that the Kingdom had alerted Netflix that it had violated the statute with an episode of its comedy show "Patriot Act," starring Hasan Minhaj, a comedian and American Muslim. How? Mr. Minhaj dared to question Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, both for the C.I.A.'s conclusion he ordered the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi and for Saudi war atrocities in Yemen.

Maybe the Saudi complaint wasn't all that shocking. Like any authoritarian monarch worth his bone saw, Prince Mohammed doesn't brook criticism, which is why he has overseen the Saudis' increased jailing of journalists, critics and rivals.

The shock came with Netflix's supine compliance. After pulling the episode from its Saudi feed, the streaming service told The Financial Times it was simply responding to "a valid legal request."

Add another 10 paces to America's retreat from its place at the forefront of free speech and political expression.

It was but one episode in one country. And Saudis who were burning to see it could still find it on YouTube.

But each small step for dictatorial crackdowns abetted by American leaders - be they in politics or business - is one giant leap for the forces that are now so successfully stanching free expression and dissent across the world.

L'affaire Netflix raises a big question: As America's new media overlords grow at a stunning rate, expanding into every nook and cranny of the globe where governments will let them in, are they compelled to defend universal values like free speech that their home country was founded on?

Increasingly, it seems, profit, expansion and perhaps a wee bit of cowardice are trumping the very principles that made the United States entertainment and news industries what they are - and that made a Netflix possible in the first place.

I'm not so naïve that I don't understand that this is the cost of becoming a dominant media player now, when success is measured by how many more hundreds of millions of users a company can attract.

"Stock price is measuring expected future earnings and those turn on global user numbers," said Sam Blatteis, the former public policy lead for Google and YouTube in the Gulf and now chief executive for MENA Catalysts, a Middle East government affairs consulting firm.

Growth lies in emerging markets, many of which may be run by less-than-savory characters ruling by less-than-savory means.

"Companies have to walk this tightrope between their cosmopolitan values on one side and realizing that going abroad into many emerging markets is a contact sport," Mr. Blatteis, speaking from Dubai, told me last week. "You have to roll up your sleeves and that can involve adapting and compromise."

That's why Apple acquiesced to China's demand that it remove various apps that bypassed the country's censors as well as the news apps of The New York Times.

It's why Hollywood pulled back from making films critical of China (getting a bounty of Chinese movie financing in return).

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Mr. Minhaj at a rehearsal for his Netflix show. In a statement, the streaming service's general counsel said that "to run a global service" requires abiding by foreign laws "even when we disagree with them." Credit Bryan Derballa for The New York Times

At the risk of hurting Mark Zuckerberg's feelings, it's why Facebook has agreed to demands from countries like Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan to restrict access to posts deemed illegal because they criticized those countries' leaders or founders.

And it's why, after Prince Mohammed said he would end a 35-year ban on movie theaters in the kingdom, entertainment moguls including Ari Emanuel, Robert A. Iger, and Mr. Murdoch feted him last spring at intimate dinners around Los Angeles, despite news of repression in the kingdom and civilian deaths in Yemen.

Then came the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, who wrote columns for The Washington Post that were critical of the crown prince. According to United States intelligence, Prince Mohammed had ordered Mr. Khashoggi's death, which his men carried out with slasher-flick aplomb, reportedly using a bone saw to dismember his body.

That wasn't enough for President Trump, who sowed doubt about the intelligence conclusion while praising Saudi Arabia for "keeping oil prices at reasonable levels." The message on human rights and the First Amendment: Make me an offer.

Mr. Trump didn't invent realpolitik. But previously, even when American actions contradicted its vision of itself, presidential paeans to democratic norms carried at least symbolic weight.

Netflix had an opportunity to send a different message.

"Even more because Trump and the White House have been so much putting money over lives, frankly, I'd hoped that this was where American businesses could take a stand," said The Post's global opinions editor Karen Attiah, who edited Mr. Khashoggi's columns. "Netflix really had a chance to stand up for values and for Hasan."

At the very least, she said, Netflix should have never called the Saudis' legal request "valid," even if it believed it had to comply to maintain its presence in the country.

Netflix wouldn't answer my question about what made the request "valid." In a statement to me, its general counsel, David Hyman, said, "Our programs push the boundaries on important social and other issues in many places around the world." But, he added, "to run a global service" the company has to abide by foreign laws "even when we disagree with them." That is, a Netflix that compromises with rogue-ish regimes is better for free expression than no Netflix at all.

One person outside the production, who was briefed on the deliberations in real time, told me Netflix discussed potential problems the episode would cause in Saudi Arabia before Mr. Minhaj filmed it, and raised the idea of scuttling it. This person would only speak on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the private discussions. An executive at the company, speaking on condition of anonymity for the same reason, said it only shared potential legal consequences with Mr. Minhaj's team as due diligence, noting it ultimately went forward with the show and its distribution in Saudi Arabia.

Until it didn't.

There have been other times when American businesses put American values above their bottom lines. After Steven Van Zandt, the E Street Band guitarist, led a musicians' boycott of South Africa to protest apartheid, corporations including Coca-Cola, General Electric and GTE followed suit by withdrawing from the country.

It's true that the entertainment industry did not bathe itself in glory during Hitler's early years.

But throughout the war and afterward, they, along with many other major American corporations, joined the robust national effort to defeat the Nazis and promote American values throughout Europe, which helped the United States win the Cold War.

It's a little hard to imagine such a national effort coming together now.

Maybe that's partly because the major social media and entertainment platforms have such global scale that they're almost their own borderless governments.

"It seems to be a moment in the evolution of the corporation that it starts to become akin to a world actor in its own right," Nicholas J. Cull, a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who has written extensively on the American information effort during the Cold War. When it comes to their home country, he said, "It's, 'We're sympathetic, but we have our own set of interests.'"

The media behemoths would be wise to remember that their future growth will rely on having the same liberties that fostered their creation.

I'm reminded of a line from the Netflix-BBC One co-production of "Watership Down," based on Richard Adams's allegorical novel about a noble herd of rabbits' pursuit of a peaceful homeland. After their leader Hazel helps another group of rabbits escape a totalitarian warren, he tells them, "You have fought so hard to earn your freedom, but now you must fight to keep it, because the battle for liberty is one which has no end."

Take heed, Netflix.

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Netflix's Bow to Saudi Censors Comes at a Cost to Free Speech

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Mediator Under Article 6, Paragraph 1 of Saudi Arabia's Anti-Cyber Crime Law, the following is punishable by up to five years in prison: "Production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy, through the information network or computers." Think "First Amendment."