Progress as Morality?
August 24th, 2005 | Published in Quotes, Culture, Technology
Perhaps because of such a psychic burden, we have held on to the idea of progress but in a form that no eighteenth-century philosopher or early-nineteenth-century heir of the Enlightenment would have embraced—could possible have embraced: the idea that technological innovation is synonymous with moral, social, and psychic progress. It is as if the question of what makes us better is too heavy, too complex—even too absurd—for us to address. We have solved it by becoming reductionists; we will leave the matter to our machinery.
—Neil Postman, Building a Bridge to the 18th Century (1999), p. 41