After reading the first three chapters of Amusing Ourselves to Death, what would you say is the major premise of Postman's book? Do you find yourself in agreement with it? Why or why not?
Be as specific and concrete as possible in your response (such as by including examples). Please respond by noon, Wednesday, Sept. 15.
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When Postman writes that the "media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations," he is describing what he refers to a lot in the book. He says culture is a creation of speech. Back when books and the written word were not only considered the most reliable sources, but also most of the entertainment in society, the release of a new book would have as much attention and readership as the Superbow does today, Postman writes.
He explains that proverbs and sayings, though sacred and trusted as truths by other cultures, are regarded more as myth, due to our trust in the written word. These words on a page last much longer than speech which tends to trickle off. He writes, "Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time." The written word has much weight in America, however television is changing us as a culture.
In the very beginning of the book, Postman explains irrelevance and passivity as it pertains to our culture. He fears that there will one day be no need to ban a book because no one will want one. He writes we are an easily distracted culture and that all our true means for news, politics and religion have become a branch of entertainment as a result of the television.
Postman is telling us that throughout history, whatever the media may be, it influences the way we live our lives and the way we understand information. Though Postman takes a pessimist's viewpoint, I agree that we as a culture reflect the media of the time. I think it's interesting to know that this book was written in the 1980s because it has a lot of relevance today. If not the exact wording, then explaining that culture is fluid especially with the addition of the internet and pocket media, shortening our attention spans and keeping us connected at all times.
The major premise of Postman’s book is clearly started in the title— Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman claims that as a society we are addicted to amusement.He argues that the brain power used to perfect words for reading and writing far outweighs the brain power used to watch television. Therefore, the television we are so reliant on, with its broad range of channels, has lessened our attention spans and is essentially dumbing us down. This can be seen in society. Sure, the war in the Middle East is reported on, but to what extent? What does the common citizen know about it? We give up trying to understand when things get sticky because we have been conditioned to do so. Postman says, “The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation." Well, if this is true, then the box that sits on the entertainment center in our living room, is our tool for conversation. It seems like a step backwards from Greek philosophy and Roman politics. People may be reading the same amount as years ago, but what people are reading has drastically changed.It is having a profound effect on our culture.
I agree with Postman to a certain extent. However, as he states in his book, “No one has the wit to know the whole truth.” Even as media students we criticize the media constantly. We might be more self aware than the general population, but we’re still so plugged in to it.
Postman makes this question very easy to answer by saying, “what my book is about is how our own tribe is undergoing a vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics.” His premise is the importance and the impact of the shift that our society underwent in the 20th century with the invention of the television. I find it very interesting that he chose to say “electronics” and not simply television, seeing as computers had not yet come into their own as a major contender in the media outlet market.
I would agree and go as far as to extrapolate his statement to the 21st century. I don’t know if postman would have believed someone if they were to tell him that the next such revolution was to take place in the following decade as opposed to the following century like the one he speaks of. As the media changes so does the society that consumes and communicates with it.
In Neil Postman's book, he says his intention is to show that a great media-metaphor shift is going on in America resulting in an increase of "dangerous nonsense" and junk infiltrating our public discourse. Postman's concern is that we are transitioning into a society that is so infatuated with material technologies that we are losing our "capacities to think". He points out through this book that people today surround themselves with irrelevance and drown themselves in their desires. Going along with Aldous Huxley's prophesy, Postman suggests that humanity itself will be solely responsible for its deprivation of autonomy, maturity, and history. In chapter one, he states that Las Vegas, Nevada is a metaphor for "our national character and aspiration" with its endless array of casinos, nightclubs, shopping, and other variations in entertainment. Postman goes on further saying that everything people consume themselves with is increasingly becoming disguised as entertainment. "Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice." His book is also about how our society is going through a transition from "the magic of writing to the magic of electronics."
Postman's concerns regarding our society's future are legitimate. Both press and mass-media are now speckled (and sometimes saturated) with entertainment. The majority of people obtain their "news" or other press by electronic mediums rather than by tangible print as well. I agree with Postman, we only have ourselves to blame. Our society runs 24/7 on a fast pace beat. Unconsciously, people have adjusted their minds and lives to keep up with our frequently updating reality. In order for people to constantly grasp all this incoming media and news some things need to be compromised, like the ability to think critically and store this information. All of the above results in a dramatic decrease in the public's attention span. Due to the lack of attention and effort people are willing to give, they obtain their information in the most convenient (and lazy) ways, usually using their computers, televisions, cellphone, laptops, electronic books, etc. to feed them knowledge. Most Americans are obsessed with their desires and pleasures, which is where this entertainment aspect comes in. Because getting people's attention is such a hard task journalists, news anchors, and the like are all incorporating entertainment into their work. When people see entertainment in the news and other press they are intrigued and sadly this is what holds the average person's attention.
The premise of Postman's book is that we have become so caught up in the Web of entertainment, that ultimately it will be our undoing.
He practically apologizes for writing the book because we have to actually sit down and read it and discern meanings of words rather than get our informations from prescribed images on TV (or in our case, the Internet.
Despite being written 30 years ago, eveything that Postman says is true. The scary part is that the damage is now 1000 fold with the dawn of the internet age. Postman knew it would get bad. But probably not this bad.
I agree with him. We live in an image driven society and that will ultimately be the death of worthwhile information and probably intelligence altogether. I don't put much stock in the future. It's very likely that we're all doomed. My brothers don't read books... at all. They're not that much younger than me. It's very disheartening.
I would say that the overwhelming theme within the first three chapters of Postman's book is that communications, in our case media, defines who we are as intellectuals. Postman claims that cultures are measured by what they believe to be significant. Television is the mouthpiece of our day and age. The content of our culture and what we deem as important is expressed via television. Postman believes that when television becomes regarded as the "carrier of important cultural conversations," then that says something about a community. His interpretation is that it inhibits intellectual thought.
I thought it was interesting in chapter one when Postman used American cities in order to describe the eras of certain time periods. Our era is Las Vegas, a city filled with constant entertainment. That thought really made me reflect and put into perspective a lot of the things we have talked about in class like entertainment overload. I hate to be pessimistic but I understand and agree with Postman's perspective. People take the "news of the day" as absolute truth, like the issues discussed and suggested are truly the most pressing and important stories of the time. In reality it is just what media wants us to hear or what they think we want to hear. It is a frightening thought and it makes me wonder where the intellectual level of our culture is heading. If Postman's forecast is correct then we are seriously going to need a big umbrella. We are going to have to rely on ourselves to steer clear of media's downpour of garbage. In part, I think we are already at that stage of the game.
Simply put, whichever form of media that is most widely accessible, widely used ("monopoly," as he calls it) to a society shapes the culture of the society. In some cases it is oral speech, in some it's written word, and in ours it is electronic. He posits the idea that as the shift between media occurs, there is a giving and taking away of what it can achieve, unfortunately not always at an equilibrium. The rest of the book is an explanation on why television takes away more than it gives.
I'm inclined to agree with him on the matter as it involves television, but I'm not so sure it carries over to the Internet. Television that it supposed to be "taken seriously" (that is to say, "informational television." I would put up some of the best fiction television shows up there with some of the best literature) cannot possibly offer the amount of intellectual wealth that a piece of written work can.
That being said, the Internet is still a primarily text-based medium. We are, right now, communicating through text. So it giveth, but it doesn't taketh so much away. It just giveths a lot.
Andrew, you're right, the Internet contains words, or text, but Postman would say we should think about the context in which those words occur. He would draw in particular to our attention to the discontinuous nature of the Web. He would claim, I believe, that the Web has accelerated and deepened the incoherence that TV pioneered.
The major premise of Postman's book is that the entertainment world we are creating ourselves is ultimately our biggest threat. What is crazy, and something you alluded to in class, is how his ideas hold up to this day. The main enemy of his time was the television, which is still a major player today, and is even more powerful because of the internet. I partly agree with Postman.
He makes some very interesting points; for example, when he argues that we are actually dumbing ourselves down by watching television rather than reading. It has shortened our attention span greatly, something I know from firsthand experience. Look at how many kids have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, and given ritalin or other drugs. As robots taught by technology, we have no power to sustain attention. We are so used to flashes and quick cuts and new ideas every ten seconds.
What also interests me is how he says electronics rather than television; clearly he understood that we were not stopping at TV's, and when you stop to think about it, a television is just one of an outrageous amount of electronic items that we use for infotainment.
I don't know if I would agree to the extreme that he appears to go. While I think it is a pressing matter, I don't think that it is the fault of the entertainment and technology entirely. It is the way things are presented that brainwashes kids into watching "Jersey Shore" and "Real World" over any sort of news. We as a people are giving in to the shorter attention span that we created, rather than fighting back. Dumber movies are being made every year. Dumbed TV shows. However, there are absolutely and always will be creative people with the power to make intelligent entertainment, and there are and will always be actual informative news people. It is up to people individually to fight against what seems to have become an almost colony type mind, where everyone thinks the same. I don't think it's as bleak and Postman seems to think it is.
I'm very interested to continue reading.
A major premise in Postman‘s book is the value of entertainment in America and how it is developed to become such an important aspect of our culture. Postman discusses how no matter what the popular form of media, it has always played a huge role in how society develops. Since the invention of television society’s main day-to-day goal is amusement. Society is not satisfied with just sitting down reading a book anymore, or listening to spoken word. It is interesting to consider that in the past people would stand and watch people speak as a form of entertainment. Today people would not consider that entertainment nor would they have the attention span to sit through the entire speech.
Postman understands that visual stimulation is now needed to grab a person’s attention. Television has changed the say society views many things, including body image and beauty. Postman compares the situation to politics. Before television physical appearance of a candidate was not a very decisive component in choosing a politician. Once televised press conferences and debates started to emerge physical appearance has become an extremely important aspect during a political campaign. Television, and just images themselves, have completely changed our social values, much more than any other medium of the past. People have shorter and shorter attention spans and continue to seek lighter nonsense entertainment to relax them. As people demand it, the more junk that appears in all forms of media.
Postman's major premise is that we are only looking for entertainment. He says that truth is linked to forms or expression other professions must tell the truth or they have nothing. He gives an example of a modern economist and how he/she would not be able to present information by reciting a poem because it would be discredited. We have accepted entertainment in the news but we have not in other forms because it makes the truth less apparent. Television has changed us as a culture and making it possible to change the format of how we receive information.
I would agree with this because on the morning news programs there are musical acts among news stories and we have accepted this as the norm. Americans are losing their attention spans and wanting only entertainment and not hard-hitting information.
One of the points that I really liked of Postman’s was when he stated that “a great media metaphor shift has taken place in america, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense”. He attributes this overflow of nonsense to the downfall of the press, then the downfall of TV and now the downfall of the technology age that we live in. He states that no one is worried about this overflow of nonsense which is obviously a huge problem.
I think its really interesting that he wrote this back in 1985 because he had no idea of the nonsense that was going to be present today. I agree with a lot of what he's saying but when I read this quote about the public discourse becoming dangerous I was even more intrigued. I think that we too are the media and we contribute to this overflow of nonsense. I completely agree with the fact that its a continuous downward spiral not only in the information we receive but in the attitude we have toward the media. If we don't have any drive to care about the trash that is being feed to us then there is no way of it to get better.
The premise of Postman's book is clear; entertainment has affected all means of communication and therefore people have lost interest in whether or not their communication has meaning as long as they're being amused. Postman presents an excellent example early on in the book. He alludes to ancient days of communication in which smoke signals were used and states that philosophy can be be expressed using smoke signals. “New techniques of communication bring a transformation of thinking, which then transforms culture”. Postman explains that television has brought a new way of thinking. One that impedes intelligent conversation due to the fact that the nature of television is to provide entertainment. The American mind was of greater intelligence earlier in history because it was a print-based society. Postman breaks it down further by referring to the alphabet. The alphabet gave the ability to "freeze speech and hear it," which gave birth to countless professions, such as scientists, historians, logicians etc.
I agree with Postman to an extent. Our way of thinking has drastically changed with the rapid development of technology. However I don't believe it is because we have lost interest in the meaning of communication (at least not everybody has). I believe it has become more and more difficult to change in a society that has turned towards all entertainment with no signs of turning back.
Postman discusses how print and written form had a major positive role in the communication in America. Written form was once used and founded on principles of intelligent people, and people who had something important to say. Print was a universal form of media that was able to converse with everyone so that people could learn something and gain a sense of enlightenment. I would say that the main premise of this book is for Postman to describe how modern society has separated itself from the serious and rational thought of media. According to Lewis Mumford, man has created machines/technology so he or she could converse with him or herself without dealing with their own problems or dealing with things themselves.
For some reasons I agree with Postman, but I also will say that the increases of technology has had more positive than negative affects in the last two centuries. Something as simple as eyeglasses enabled someone to see like everyone else. Microscopes enabled doctors and scientists to understand more about the human anatomy and cellular processes. Even such things as TV, radio and the internet has enabled life to be easier and maybe fun, however not as enjoyable. I would apply Postman’s negative thoughts to media with all the Iphone Applications, all the texting and how cell phones became a culture icon. I feel that we are at a point in human society, where media and technology either needs to slow down or stop. It’s getting to a point where I’m getting sick of the phones, and the constant media devices that I want to start writing on a piece of paper. The media today has turned mass communication and conversation into a joke or an absurdity. As Postman says, print in America was founded with the “Founding Fathers”. I think that print needs to be brought back to its ancestors so that written form can once again be taken seriously and so people could become more enlightened and eventually evolve as thinkers.
I believe that the major premise of Postman's book is marking the shift from being a information/thinking culture to a culture based on what we see, and the problems that are associated with living that way. One example that really sticks with me is the one concerning Howard Taft and how he would have never been considered for a nomination because he wasnt attractive enough.
I find his argument very convincing and persuasive. Everything on TV nowadays is based on sex and entertainment. That's just what has been proven to sell. What TV has created, it seems, is a culture of materialists where what is attractive and trendy is more important than the hard facts. A culture where using our brains aren't being used the most, instead out infantile eyes are processing what instinctually we find appealing: sex.
I am using the word sex loosely as an umbrella term for what is considered pleasing to the eyes. I am not just referring to half-naked women and men with great bodies.
Get those minds out of the gutter.
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