facts

  1. The principal strength of the telegraph was its capacity to move information, not collect it, explain it or analyze it. In this respect, telegraphy was the exact opposite of typography. Books, for example, are an excellent container for the accumulation, quiet scrutiny and organized analysis of information and ideas. It takes time to write a book, and to read one; time to discuss its contents and to make judgments about their merit, including the form of their presentation. A book is an attempt to make thought permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. Therefore, civilized people everywhere consider the burning of a book a vile form of anti-intellectualism. But the telegraph demands that we burn its contents. The value of telegraphy is undermined by applying the tests of permanence, continuity or coherence. The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.
    Neil Postman
  2. It may be of some interest to note, in this connection, that the crossword puzzle became a popular form of diversion in America at just that point when the telegraph and the photograph had achieved the transformation of news from functional information to decontextualized fact. This coincidence suggests that the new technologies had turned the age-old problem of information on its head: Where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they had to invent contexts in which otherwise useless information might be put to some apparent use. The crossword puzzle is one such pseudo-context; the cocktail party is another; the radio quiz shows of the 1930’s and 1940’s and the modern television game show are still others; and the ultimate, perhaps, is the wildly successful “Trivial Pursuit.” In one form or another, each of these supplies an answer to the question, “What am I to do with all these disconnected facts?” And in one form or another, the, answer is the same: Why not use them for diversion? for entertainment? to amuse yourself, in a game?
    Neil Postman
  3. A five-step process to formulating ideas - Gather materials. - Masticate the facts. - Relax and drop the whole subject. - Be ready to recognize and welcome the idea when it comes. - Shape and develop your idea into usefulness.
    Bruce Lee
  4. Information consists of statements about the facts of the world. Facts cannot be wrong. They are what they are. Statements about facts - that is, information - can be wrong and often are.
    Neil Postman
  5. The science curriculum is usually focused on communicating the known facts of each discipline without serious attention … to the history of discipline, the mistakes scientist have made, the methods they use and have used, or the ways in which scientific claims are either refuted or confirmed.
    Neil Postman
  6. … since a person who, without intending to lie, says that he saw or understood a certain thing ought to be believed more than a thousand others who deny it merely because they could not have seen it or understood it: just as, in the discovery of the antipodes, the testimony of a few sailors who sailed around the earth was believed rather than a thousand philosophers who could not believe it was round.
    Czesław Miłosz
  7. But today I see that the effect those exercises had on me cannot be measured by the sparsity of material. The time we devoted to them, although I did not suspect it then, was to gave far greater weight than the whole days of storing up useless facts from different fields.
    Czesław Miłosz
  8. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: “What does his voice sound like?” “What games does he like best?” “Does he collect butterflies?” They ask: “How old is he?” “How many brothers does he have?” “How much does he weight?” “How much money does his father make?” Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, “I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof…,” they won’t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, “I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.” Then they exclaim, “What a beautiful house”.
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry