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The Power Of Possession By Neil Postman

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Power of Possession
Introduction
When technology became one of the important factors in the society, many people enjoyed using lots of technologies as God’s gifts. However, some people also thought they need to be aware of negative effects of the technology. During that time, the God’s Must Be Crazy movie came out and portrayed the current society with the technology and consumer behaviors. Then, a few years later, Neil Postman delivered his ideas on technological change. Both movie and article told the society that technology hugely affects people and their lives, and aroused the seriousness of power of possession. This paper will be researching and analyzing consumers of technologically civilized society in the movie and will relate to Neil …show more content…

Also, Kevin Kelly points out about this ironic situation in the article called What Technology Wants. He says, “Personal freedoms are constrained by society, as they must be in any civilization for the sake of order. The stronger that technology makes the society, the less individual freedom there is” (Kelly, 2010). Because they value power of the possession and did not know the purpose of it, they end up trapped in the complex society and readapting new environment all the time without having a true freedom.
Technology Changes People and Their Environments …show more content…

He gives an example of the alphabet. It was not invented but people think it is one of the gifts of nature (Postman, 1998). The technology changes the behavior of the society and changes people to think possession is powerful. For example in the movie, the civilized society wasn’t created naturally. However, Kate’s mom worries about her daughter working in rural area of Kalahari because she thinks the area is all desert and not civilized. She forgets that people can live without advanced technologies. Also, technology changes people to forget the past and think that they cannot live without a new technology. A thing they have never needed before suddenly becomes a necessity in the society. After Bushmen found the bottle, they all suddenly need that bottle for everything. Unfortunately, they get only one bottle so it is hard for them to share, and then arise a feeling of wanting to own. Once they taste the power of possess, it is hard to get over it and, they will perceive it as part of the natural

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