After you have read chaps. 1-4 in Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, please respond to the following question:
Would Postman agree or disagree with the author of the essay below? Why or why not? Draw directly on the reading to support your interpretation.
In addition, do you agree with the essay? Why or why not?
Your response is due by 4 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 8.
http://www.evergreenreview.com/120/electronic-book-burning.html
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In my opinion, Postman would agree with the author of this essay and admire his passion and appreciation for the books. I do not think that he would make the same efforts to protect the components of the book, but would voice similar opinions of the multiple closings of bookstores. In contrast, the author of the essay Alan Kaufman seems to recognize what Postman also recognizes and that is the dying generation of intellect that comes with written text. Both authors suggest that written text provides intellect and the substance to carry and share knowledge; not that e-books do not supply the same contents but it is the principal of how it is being consumed. Postman says “People of television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go as far as to require it in some circumstances by law.” Kaufman pulls an example from an article which states the CEO of American and European owned publishing companies provide a warning that “..unless E-Book reverses their recent decision to set the ceiling price for book downloads at $9.99, then hardcovers, which are the premise for much book publishing and even bookstores, will be dealt a death blow. In effect, it will precipitate the end of the book.” That is scary. Because this leads me to think that the death of books will ultimately end with technology suffocating a once beautiful way to communicate into a wretched, ignorant way of communicating. All in all, I agree with the essay, and I respect the author for standing up for the book and all that it represents.
Initially the institutionalist view of education told by Hugh Heclo is contrary to the opinions I held before engaging in the article. The individualistic understanding of learning is how i explain my purpose for pursuing education. This reminds me of readings about the theory of multiple intelligences I have seen in the past. The theory says that people are naturally inclined to be better at certain types of education. I view my education as a composite of ideas that have sparked my interest and lead me to new discoveries. Creating a path that is all my own. With deeper reflection Heclo’s view is not in conflict with my views. The institutions apply rules and expectations, and are different stages of development.The individual has the choice of how to experience these stages, and the level of impact that these experiences have. Hopefully people engage in institutions which they are skilled, and enjoy making the journey more individualized I agree that the institutions are not recreated in each generation, but instead a progressive evolution to fit the needs of society, and the individuals relationship to the society. I hesitate to accept the premise that someones role in society defines them. This statement removes the multidimensional aspect human being posses. Passionate people devote themselves to learning to perfect, and reach goals in their skills. These same people pursue other intellectual activities on the side of their main interest, or job. The final graphs of the piece make me unsure of my opinions. Do these institutions need to push conformity? Are they intrinsically designed to do this, or is it the influences of other peoples perceptions of our journey through these institutions?
Alan Kaufman’s essay plays off the notion that, along with the disappearance of books, the content of books is disappearing as well. And while this is an important idea, I believe Postman would mourn the loss of physical books more than the content, as Postman writes of “Media as Epistemology,” or, the media as a new form, a limiting and dumbed down form of gathering knowledge. Typography, as Postman says in chapters three and four, has shaped America to be a nation founded on literacy—a nation with leaders, unrecognizable outside of their written words, who were skilled in rhetoric. “We have reached,” Postman says on page 28, “I believe, a critical mass in that electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character of our symbolic environment.” In other words, media has warped the symbolic aspects of American culture; while media perhaps has not changed the words being said, it has changed how we receive, how we interact with the information being given to us. Postman says with politicians, we would not be as receptive to an obese politician, no matter how much we may agree with his ideas, as much as we would a fit, “visually pleasing” one, and such is the nature of print. While the physical books are being decimated, the content may not be changed, but way we receive the content will, which is the aspect of Kaufman’s essay I believe Postman would take away. In electronic form, the written word becomes less intellectually engaging, and more of a form of mere dumbed down entertainment. In some cases, books with illustrations, when converted to electronic form, come equipped with animated illustrations, exemplifying and emphasizing Postman’s idea that we have become a culture who needs something visually pleasing to keep our interests.
I, on the other hand, agree with Kaufman whole heartedly and revolt against the deletion of physical books with just as much fervor, due to the limitations as well as the change of interaction Kindles and such objects would bring about. Just as laptops are being integrated into public schools, I believe it is only a matter of a decade, at least, before electronic books are fully integrated and utilized, which raises the problems Kaufman points out. When those who have access to the content of Kindles decide what books are appropriate or not, they drastically limit the freedom of knowledge that comes with physical books, and this limited freedom makes Kaufman’s notion of “electronic book burning” most integral. Although it is not a literal burning, the information is disappearing all the same.
I think that Postman would definitely agree with the author of the essay, The Electronic Book Burning. The essay depicts how our culture is shifting mediums from print and books to technology. The author of the essay also discusses the consequences behind the fall of the book and the rise of technology and media. The author of the essay suggests that newscasters and publishing companies argue that transferring the medium to new technologies such as the Ipad and kindle is doing no damage-they are simply keeping up with marketplace and accepting that this technology is the future. They also argue that the message within a text is what truly matters so transferring the message from one medium to another is virtually harmless. However, the author strongly disagrees with this idea and analyzes how the transfer of the medium is definitely changing the message and how people understand and interpret it. This idea is how I concluded that Postman would definitely agree with this author.
In the first four chapters of the book, Postman repeatedly speaks of the medium in which people gain knowledge and how it affects their interpretations of the message. The nature of our cultures public discourse has begun to take the form of entertainment, which is ultimately “amusing ourselves to death”. The information we are receiving from the media nowadays is simply designed to entertain us. For example, we are becoming very “image-oriented”, or in other words, we care more about appearance and a persons image than their actual merit and intellect. We are becoming less skeptical and taking things less seriously which is therefore changing the overall message within public discourse.
I do agree with the essay and Postman. I’m finding that we have less and less control over the information we receive and its validity and accuracy. We are simply accepting whatever the TV or other forms of media throws at us- expecting them to be true. People are no longer telling stories through public discourse, allowing us to come up with our own interpretations. Instead, we are being told how to think and how to interpret certain messages. Thinking about the current media scares me, it is misleading us into thinking we have more control than ever before when it pertains to the type of information we are receiving but it is doing quite the contrary. I find myself falling into this trap; believing every type of public discourse thrown at me and becoming less skeptical of its accuracy and I believe it will only get worse as technology progresses.
I definitely feel as though Postman would agree with Kaufman, the author of “The Electronic Book Burning.” Throughout the first four chapters of Amusing Ourselves to Death Postman talks a lot about how we were changing into a much more technological society. It’s crazy to think that this was written in the 80s, considering how much more technologically based we’ve grown. That being said, he talks a lot about how this all isn’t necessarily a good thing. We’ve made a shift away from the printed press, which in turn changed the way receive things. Kaufman also states how due to the fact that technology seems to be overpowering our society, books are dying out. This is an extremely terrifying concept. I can’t picture a world without physical hard-copy books, but given the latest trends, who knows where they’ll be in another twenty or thirty years. I agree with Kaufman that it’s troubling to see that many bookstores are dying out due to the fact that people just aren’t buying them. I don’t think that this would necessarily surprise Postman, but I do feel he’d be a bit disturbed with the new patterns we’ve developed in the past twenty or so years.
It’s also interesting to note that Postman discusses how because we’re more technology driven, the messages we are getting and receiving are a bit distorted. He mentions this in the first chapter when he talks about how people are more concerned with how things look visually in the technological sphere rather than the content actually being delivered: “As the influence of print wanes, the content of politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to television” (Postman, 8). Because technology makes things so visiual, the overall message people are getting isn’t the same when it’s displayed as a television news broadcast. This also goes into play with Marshall McLuhan’s famous idea that “the medium is the message.” It’s all about where you’re displaying your content that really determines what message is being given.
I think that Postman would indeed agree with the essay, but not for the same reasons that the author is presenting. In my interpretation of the essay, it seems like the Evergreen essayist is defending his craft. He mentions towards the end that he gets satisfaction from having his own books. Having an e-book is unattractive to him. So, his reasoning for protesting the closing of book stores and people in general not reading has a lot to with himself.
Postman, I think would agree with the essay because Postman believes that written language is an intellectual way for cultures to communicate and have centuries long debates and discussions. Postman also sees written language as a venue towards truth and understanding.
I think Postman cherishes written language, books, essays, and others because they are most often well thought out and not merely for entertainment. Most times, an author's attractiveness doesn't sell books unless they are already celebrities. Most times, books don't have jingles and pretty pictures. They are a solid means of expression and still held in high esteem and considered high culture.
One interesting point that the essayist brought up was that readers in today's society are rare. It's not that people are illiterate, but that they would rather be entertained. They would rather see the movie. I think Postman would agree with this argument as well because he believes that technology has made humans more prone to no think and find pride in it. People aren't ashamed to say that they would rather watch the movie rather than read the book.
I believe that Postman would agree with Kaufman's essay "The Electronic Book Burning" because early on in his book, Postman describes the American culture as "entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment," which is essentially what electronic versions of books are. Similar to what Emily said, page 28 of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" shows Postman commenting on the electronic medium from which we gain our information from. "We have reached a critical mass in that electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character of our symbolic environment." Even though Postman argues that books are still printed, even places like schools do not hold information like they used to.
Kaufman refers to physically printed books as "sacred," and is dedicated to fighting the electronic book. He compares the popularity of the electronic book to the printed book leaving its body on earth and dying. It's true; the physical book is becoming obsolete and I believe Postman would definitely agree that this is a negative thing. However, Postman is more concerned about the context in which we are receiving our information rather than where our information is coming from. If it's the same information, what would it matter where it comes from?
I do agree that there is something indescribable about feeling the weight of a book, and that there is no need to glamorize reading the way electronic books are doing now, but it also goes back to one of the first points Postman made in his book, that people are "devoted to the idea of entertainment." If it looks more appealing, it will exist in an American world in no time.
I think Postman would agree with Alan Kaufman’s essay “The Electronic Book Burning.” Kaufman compares books to people in the final paragraph where he declares that the end of books is also the end of “all things human.” Postman declares that the descent of the typographic mind begins with reason and ends with entertainment. I argue that reason is a vital characteristic of being human. Postman’s “descent of the typographic mind” relates to Kaufman’s idea of all things human being lost with the disappearance of books. Postman argues there are a few serious cultural advantages to a typographic culture that, according to Kaufman, signify the presence of humanity.
According to Postman, some serious advantages of a typographic culture include a more politically enlightened public, an abundance of serious, content-laden discourse, greater attention spans, and a better understanding of more complex rhetorical resources (such as sarcasm, irony, paradox, elaborated metaphors). A typographic culture can detect abuses in logic, compare and contrast assertions, classify, make inferences, and connect generalizations. I argue these advantages as being essential to humanity.
Kaufman relates the decline of books to the “hypercapitalist imperatives” of our time, saying that most American book publishers “are linked to twenty first century, late-stage hypercapitalist imperatives predicated entirely upon ceaseless expansion, the inherent belief in Darwinian obsolescence and succession as the lifeblood of successful economics and societal advance.” The media is clearly a moneymaking business. Postman would argue that these “hypercapitalist imperatives” that control the media in America are leading us down a road of decreasing attention, increasing ignorance, less serious public discourse, and an overall dumbing down of society. This is an especially convincing argument considering current media saturation in the advent of electronic media. Postman describes this movement as the shift from the Age of Exposition to the Age of Show Business.
I agree with Kaufman and appreciate the humor in his writing. His description of the shift from a typographic culture to electronic media as a revolution was spot-on in my opinion. I think the public will continue placing their trust in electronics until that trust is broken. It’s extraordinary how revolutionary electronic media’s takeover has been (and continues to be). I, like Kaufman, am a bit anxious about the public’s willingness to give up books for digital versions. This is not only due to my personal bias that physical books are one hundred times better than digital copies. Kaufman’s example of Animal Farm and 1984 being electronically deleted from users’ devices is a perfect example of my distrust for companies having final say in the ownership of my literature. I’d rather not have Amazon’s dirty hands all over my books. The public’s blind trust in digital ownership and the move to electronic media has me anxious about the future, as I believe it does Mr. Kaufman as well.
Initially, I questioned whether or not Postman would agree with Kaufman’s sentiments regarding electronic books; It seemed to me that Kaufman wouldn’t be too upset over things such as Kindles. After all, a Kindle would have the exact same material as a physical book. The writing would be exactly the same and everything that could be read in a book could be just as easily read in a Kindle. I thought to myself, “It’s just another form of book. The manner in which reading the material wouldn’t affect the actual writing...” Having wrote this after reading Postman’s book on my MacBook at home and my iPhone during my lunch break at work, I couldn’t believe that it took me so long to come to the conclusion that of course Postman would agree with Kaufman. “We have reached, I believe, a critical mass in that electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character of our symbolic environment... To be sure, there are still readers and there are many books published, but the uses of print and reading are not the same as they once were,” Postman wrote. While, yes, he is mainly focused on television-based media, I absolutely believe that Postman would hate the fact that people such as myself are reading his material from iPhones and laptops. By taking the physical book out of the equation, you’re also taking out the true understanding of his writings. When reading a book all there is is the book itself. All you can do is keep reading, turning the page, finish the next chapter. When reading a book on an electronic device such as a smart phone or a laptop, you might as well be watching television and trying to read at the same time. I can say from my experience, I’d get a page or two into reading and someone would text me, or I’d get an email that I just had to check, or I’d get distracted and start playing Bubble Safari. There’s no way anyone could truly interpret and understand Postman’s or anyone else’s writings the way the authors intended you to. I will say I’m honestly doing a disservice to the writing by not reading it in its original form (but alas, shipping times would have prevented me from finishing this on time). By changing my opinion about whether Postman would agree or not, I also changed my own opinion. Writing this made me realize how futile electronic devices can be for reading. While I love the fact that I’m able to read on my iPhone or my MacBook for the ease of things, I understand now how Kaufman could be so angry at the fact that books are dying out.
Postman would likely have a conniption:
On YouTube today, I watched a mandatory ad for a “smart phone” (it could have been the I-phone, I don’t remember). In the commercial, a young boy gets a smart phone from his parents. The next day, he uses it for mature intellectual development: he looks up vocabulary, studies historical figures, and listens to a political speech. At the end of the commercial, the boy gets an “A” on his school project, his parents hug him, and I can finally listen to the song I came for on YouTube. The premise of the commercial, that buying a smart phone for your kid will enable them to have hand held access to a world of knowledge, is quixotic. Yes the answers are there, but they are shrouded in endless distraction, especially on a “smart phone” and especially for a child. Today I watched a young boy and girl glued to screens in a restaurant. Neither seemed to interact with each other or their parents, and I would bet a million dollars they weren’t reading the Gettysburg Address or about Abraham Lincoln.
Postman would strongly agree with Kauffman. I agree with Kauffman. The book is being phased out, and with it: attention spans, in depth study. The middle man is getting richer, the public less enlightened, but momentarily more entertained. When th
I feel that Postman would agree with the sentiment of the article. Primarily, the fact that our medium for delivery has changed. This has lead to a loss of content as we try to reach a lowest common denominator. The reason for using more ubiquitous technology is to reach more eyes. A dumbing down of the material is also needed to widen the appeal, and this is leading to the stupification of America.
There are also implications with the use of e-readers that make censorship easier, as ebook retailers can remotely wipe content from your device.
After reading the first four chapters of Amusing Ourselves to Death and the essay by Alan Kaufman I would say that Postman would definitely agree with the author of the essay. In the first four chapters of the book, Postman emphasizes how America is becoming more and more media driven and obsessed with entertainment. He stated that throughout time various American cities served as metaphors for what American life stood for during that time. When the book was written in the 1980's, Postman stated how America's metaphor was Las Vegas due to the entertainment and media driven society it has become. That is what I think the author of the essay was trying to point out. Hard copies of books are becoming obsolete as society is becoming more technology driven. People are accessing their books now with technology such as nooks and kindles. Kaufman also stresses that not only are bookstores dying, but so are the content of the books.
I do agree with the essays main thesis. Although there are many different mediums to reading books today, none compare to an actual hard copy of a book. Society today has gotten so caught up in entertainment and advancement that it has become forgotten whats important.
I enjoyed the writings of Postman, but my initial reaction to Kaufman's essay was skeptical to say the least. I kept trying to understand Kaufman's disdain for text simply being read off a different medium and the essay alone wouldn't have swayed me one bit. It's only when taking Postman's explanations of changing media into account that I saw the two authors being able to completely agree with one another. Postman focused mainly on America's discourse changing from absolute dependence on the printing press to a divided focus on every subtle message sent from images on television. I stopped reading Postman's work momentarily to share my amusement toward the anecdote of Stephen A. Douglas and Lincoln's seven-hour debate with a friend of mine who was reading in the same room. I considered the irony of doing this when I continued reading Postman, who questioned the attention span of modern audiences. I now see that Kaufman's refusal to adapt to technological change was very grounded. Kaufman knows that once people attempt to read on a Kindle or similar device, not only can the owners of such media dictate what can and cannot be read by people (as illustrated in the removal of "Animal Farm"), but the viewers of such media now have the temptation of the alternate methods in which they can use their technology. Reading Hamlet while on twitter certainly won't have the same effect on the reader as reading out of a book that contains no unavoidable advertisements between pages. As reading itself will become a less consuming task, the experience of reading will have completely changed by the time the last bookstore closes. If Postman were to see this societal change, I'm sure an "I told you so," wouldn't suffice to make him feel better. Where television and interactive media have replaced our attention, even those who still read are now losing their grip on what the printed page has given us for so long.
I at first struggled with deciding whether Postman would agree or disagree with the author of the essay, because the bones they seemed to be picking appear to be extracted from two separate bodies. I believe there is common ground which they both touch upon: reading text upon a technological device and obtaining information that way has a negative impact in one way or another; it is not a positive shift within our consumption of obtaining literature. Yet, I think their ideas are based upon two different concerns. While Kaufman’s piece seems to be a well formulated rant upon the travesty of the loss of tangible reading materials, and how it’s disgusting that publishers do not care about creating books because they only care about creating money. He then compares this alteration from paper and print to technology as a religious massacre of an old way of life, the loss of something magical and uniquely humanistic that is deteriorating in front of us and we don’t seem to have the ability to grasp the severity of it. But that is where his argument essentially stops – Kindles are evil, because mass consumption of technology is evil, because it just is.
Postman doesn’t deny, with a clearly negative and somber tone within his writing, that there has been and continues to be a shift throughout the last couple hundred years of how we obtain our text. He does, however, cite more specific and in-depth reasoning behind the distaste in his mouth left from swallowing this bitter pill. This pill, of course, being the reality of technology trumping the printed word’s relevance. And it is within this concept of reality which that I first saw the difference between Kaufman and Postman. It appears Kaufman is so unhappy with the current state of consumption of the written word, and is so caught up in bashing it, that he has not taken the time to step back and apply the one word that Postman seems to be implying: inevitable. It is inevitable that this transition has been years within the making. In chapter two, Postman explains, “Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the history of communications knows that every new technology for thinking involves a trade-off. It giveth and taketh away, although not quite in equal measure.” The idea that computers and devices such as Kindles could be present, and people NOT choose to read on them, seems ignorant to the evolution of thought and culture. As Postman continuously evoked throughout the first few chapters of the book, we don’t consciously shape our text and technology as much as it shapes us – not that actual content of words themselves, but how we receive them. I think this allows Postman to come to terms and be slightly ok with the fact that yes, there are things such as Kindles present today and yes, people will use them to absorb media and text. Through my understanding, technology is not the issue.
CONTINUED:
What is the issue, is how this technology is effecting us. And within this argument he makes, I find myself agreeing less with Kaufman’s essay than with Postman’s idea that it is not our obtainment of technology itself that it numbing us and confining us into a mass genocide of our own way of doing this, but rather our use of this technology. I thought it interesting and powerful Postman’s use of past political campaigns to aid in his point about news literacy and comprehension compared to the current day. Where we used to think about a public figure and automatically correlate their words and ideas, we now only think of an image or a poorly expanded idea. Where we as a nation could once stand for hours listening to the written word of a president and comprehend each and every point made, Postman points out the irony of how currently there is a “modern idea of testing a reader’s ‘comprehension’”. As he put it, the written word has both a “monopoly on attention and intellect.” Today, we have neither. Reading comprehension in public schools is disastrous. The attention span of anyone under 35 is none- existent. Our ability to reason, to take facts and ideas and sort them and comprise them into our own facts and ideas, are slowly, but surely, disappearing along with the books from their shelves.
So while yes, it does sadden me that books are becoming obsolete and items like Kindles are becoming the sole way of obtaining novels and news and everything in between, I choose, like Postman and unlike Kaufman, not to dwell on the inevitable. I do, however, choose to dwell on a fact that Postman brings up – “It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of print culture.”
Postman would agree with the author of the essay entitled “The Electronic Book Burning” because of their similar criticism of the way the media is heading. Although Postman talks more about news and how it has become basically entertainment, both he and the author, Alan Kaufman share a love for literature, each referring to themselves as the type of people who read books physically and not online. Postman argues that “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, without protest or even much popular notice (4).” This is similar to Kaufman’s example of how bookstores all over the country have been closing down noting that the “portion of the populace who cherish books—an ever-shrinking minority” are “left baffled and bereft.” Both show that the hard book-loving, straight-facts news reading population is not the majority in this country.
The one place where Postman would disagree with Kaufman is his view on technology. Postman says that without technology “news of the day” does not exist. “...lacking a technology to advertise [news], people could not attend them, could not include them in their daily business. (7)” However, he then ties this back to this being a “media event” or a form of entertainment. Kaufman, although personally preferring print, understands the importance of the technology also. “What is sacred are the texts and those are being transferred to the Internet where they will attain a new kind of high-tech-assured immortality,” he said. Postman would definitely agree that in order to remain relevant, these books would need to become electronic because of the fact he believes the media has become a form of entertainment.
I agree with most of this essay. It is obvious that bookstores are disappearing all over and everything is being transferred online now, there is no questioning that fact. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that this disappearance of hard books was an act of God. Otherwise, I think he makes a lot of good points. He said smaller authors are disappearing while, “blockbuster thrillers and middlebrow memoirs and diet books huff their way forward” for now, a statement that I agree with. It seems like it is almost inevitable for books to go the way of the dodo, however I don’t think they will ever all disappear from our culture. Students still will need textbooks, certain people will always want to have a hard copy of their favorite books and libraries will always stack shelves of the classics. I think it is merely a matter of dwindling numbers rather than extinction, or as he puts it, death of spirits moving to heaven (the internet).
I believe that Postman would definitely agree with Alan Kaufman in his essay “The Electronic Book Burning”. Kaufman is making the argument that with the actual physical copies of books disappearing and turning into electronic versions, the content is being altered, or at least the way we receive it is. In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Postman says of how his studies of the Bible led him to think, “Forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture.” Kaufman states that as electronic media has grown, the content that people read has shifted to blockbusters, memoirs, and diet books, but even those may become less appealing. Our culture’s favored content is whatever entertains us. The most popular books tend to be the blockbusters that translate into film like Twilight, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, and Fifty Shades of Gray, as well as diet books by actresses that society wants to look like. Even those “blockbuster” books are becoming obsolete, because people just wait to see the movie. This view on content by Kaufman applies to Postman’s belief that two forms of media can sometimes be so drastically different that the same ideas can’t be accommodated. We want content that entertains us; which we can get through electronic media with videos and photos and all the extras that come with Kindles and iPads. The content is entertainment, not traditional written word in books. I agree with this essay. Kaufman talks about publishers becoming generators of money and not books, and the major companies ultimately switching over to e-books if that’s what is going to generate it, which I’ve noticed. Those large companies control the fate of books and their content by controlling the shift to electronic media. It made me think of how much the media controls us in general, and the content we receive whether in books, television, or movies. We believe the media and what it puts out to us. The commercials are not for Barnes and Noble, or to buy a physical copy of a book, its for Kindles and Nooks. The more we see of that, the more our culture will shift completely into the mode of electronic media.
Postman would agree with the opinion the author presents in The Electronic Book Burning. The medium information is presented is going through an evolution to match the technologies of the time. Postman traces the changes in what mediums of communication are relied upon in Amusing Ourselves to Death, and how these changes influence our perception, and understanding of the information presented. Postman makes a distinction that written text almost automatically holds more ethos than the spoken word of an individual. Since show business is taking over the industry of communication there is now an importance placed on visual rhetoric. Postman references this when speaking about the long speeches which were given back in the 1800’s. These speeches ran for several hours, and shows that there was a stronger attention span than there is now. This visual rhetoric is seen as easy to understand by it’s audience. Technology has allowed the media to use visual rhetoric more and more effectively as technology arises. Even though this trend towards visuals is observed in the media, consumers still hold connotations about text print and its accuracy. This denotes the trend in Electronic books because the medium has evolved to meet the level of technology of this society. Now people will not have to have whole rooms devoted to be library’s, and they now can carry hundreds of years of literature in their pocket. Postman also takes a moment to describe how all mediums for communication can have a tendency to produce “junk”. With the advent of digital libraries This may exacerbate this problem. When books took up space in your home, the amount of them you could own as a consumer was limited. This natural selection of literature is now gone since the internet is unable to be filled. Postman would agree with the trend of technological evolution but would still argue that textual communication is still held in high importance among many consumers, and readers.
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