Neil Postman
The Faustian bargain
What it gives and what it takes land on different people
Technopoly (1992), chapter one; Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change (1998)
A new tool is in front of you. The question is not whether it is good, but which two questions to ask about it.
What actually happened?
Benedictine monks built the mechanical clock in the thirteenth century to get the hours of prayer exactly right — seven times a day, not by the look of the sky. Centuries later the people who found the thing most useful were merchants paying wages by the hour and interest by the day. The clock did not lie; it kept time accurately. But once keeping time accurately was possible, who it would serve was no longer for its makers to decide.
It is a bargain, not a gift
His first point: technology is never free. He calls it a Faustian bargain — it hands you one thing and takes another, and no receipt is ever issued for the thing taken. So is it any good has no answer. Ask what it gives and what it cancels.
Navigation freed you from remembering the route and took your sense of the city's map. One is on the feature list, the other is nowhere.
The people who gain are not the people who pay
The second point is harder: advantages and costs are never spread evenly. A technology is often pure gain for one group and pure loss for another, and the group deciding to adopt it is usually the one gaining.
Typesetting software saved the publisher an entire hot-metal floor. None of the saving went to the compositors, who lost a trade.
Its makers are not the right judges of it
This is what he took from the story Plato recorded: an inventor is fond of his invention and sees what it can do rather than what it removes. So the case for and against a tool should not rest on the people who know it best.
The clearest account of what a system costs rarely comes from whoever designed it. It comes from whoever is blocked by it daily.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: a new tool is in front of you, everyone is saying how good it is, and you cannot name what is off.
Ask first: what does it give and what does it cancel? Who is pure gain here, who is pure loss, and which side am I on?
Where it goes wrong: treating a cost as a reason to decline. Faustian bargains are often worth signing; he only wants both columns filled in first.
Lines to keep
All technological change is a trade-off.
The advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population.
It is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a one-sided effect.
Same situation, other people are asking
Do I go all in now or wait it out?Everyone's piling in. Is being late actually fatal?The money pouring in looks insane. Do I stay out?Everyone is adopting this. Do I have to as well?Do I jump in now · all 5 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.