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Summary: Startling expose of the future of our culture.
Review: Neil Postman's thesis in Amusing Ourselves to Death is simple. In his eye-opening work, he demonstrates "how forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms" (6). In other words, the way something is communicated controls what is actually being communicated. The forms of media are not merely neutral channels through which facts and ideas flow. Those forms themselves either taint or enhance the message. Based on this premise, Postman demonstrates the dumbing influences that the television has had upon modern American minds. By doing so, he contends that a culture based on words is superior to one based on pictures. The book is an apology for reading. Though it was published in 1985, it has equal, if not more, relevance to us today.To begin, Postman argues that every medium of communication carries with it an epistemology, a theory of knowledge. For instance, "'Seeing is believing' has always a preeminent status as an epistemological axiom, but 'saying is believing,' 'reading is believing,' 'counting is believing,' 'deducing is believing,' and 'feeling is believing' are other that have risen or fallen in importance as cultures have undergone media change" (24). He demonstrates that the Jewish concept of God, with their application of the second commandment, taught them a very high form of abstract thinking. The reader must persevere during the first two chapters because his reasoning, though tight, can tend to be somewhat thick. Beginning with chapter three, Postman gives a historical survey of America's way of thinking, as dictated by its forms of communication. America began as a typographic society. Reading and writing were valued greatly for many reasons, not the least of which was that people could read the Bible. All people recognized the value of knowledge. As a result, people would gather in droves to hear lectures and debates. For instance, people in the 1860s were captivated for 4 or 5 hours at a time by the meticulously reasoned debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. Frequently, they even lasted for more than one day! Postman shows that "a language-centered discourse such as was characteristic of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America tends to be both content-laden and serious, all the more so when it takes its form from print" (50). A transition began, however, with the telegraph, which "made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence" (65). Hence, there arose "context-free information," mouth-sized bytes of information with no true relevance to one's life. Along came television, which makes the "three-pronged attack" upon America's mind even fiercer. The vast majority of communication on the television has as its one underlying purpose entertainment. "No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure" (87). For the remainder of the book, Postman demonstrates that entertainment is necessary for the television's communication of news (even the most tragic), religion, politics, and education. In each area, information is greatly simplistic and decontextualized and requires no prior knowledge of anything. America has defeated herself like a tyrant. "Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse" (141). Postman's solution to the problem lies mainly within the realm of education. We must understand what the television is, "for no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are" (161).
Rating:
Summary: Amused to Death
Review: Written in the year after Orwell's predictions of 1984 failed to materialize, Postman remarks on how we instead find ourselves the casualties of the prophetic fears of Huxley's Brave New World. The soma that Huxley foretold that would have the power to invoke pleasure and cause us to ignore relevance is realized in the medium of television. Through its popularity and resulting power, television - whose bottom-line is simply to entertain - has caused a revolution in our views of education, religion, and politics. Indeed, Postman convincingly demonstrates how we have undergone a paradigm-shift in the way that we think in general. Arguing that the very nature of the medium of television prevents us from reflecting on the material transmitted to us, Postman explains how we have ushered in the age of "disinformation." He also explains that television's effects are far-reaching, with adverse consequences on print and radio. Normally, one would disregard a 15-year old book discussing emergent technology as being horribly outdated. On the contrary, Postman's message bears even greater relevance to us today than it did to his audience in 1985. This is a great book with an incredible power to change the way that you look at things.
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Summary: The problem is clear...who is to blame, though?
Review: Neil Postman takes the reader through a historical tour of how informative images are ruining our brains. The description of the problem is eye opening to say the very least, since it reduces the evening news to nothing more than labored stories that do not impact your life. The message really hits home when Postman himself admits that the junk on TV is the only thing worth watching, since it does not try to pull any punches. But the causes of our complacency in the age of technology goes back to another time. Way back, according to Postman. And it's a hard thing to grapple with especially since they are technological revolutions that, frankly and accurately speaking, we have never known a world without. THE PHOTOGRAPH + THE TELEGRAPH = DUMBER PEOPLES Okay, jesting aside, the photograph is the fail-safe way of representing an image of something that to people that they would normally not have the opportunity to see. And to most individuals, this is harmless. Not to Postman. In his eyes, photographs destroys whatever creative brain cells we had to begin with. Paintings and sculptures were filled with mystery and interpretations on unlocking said qualities. But with the photograph, it's there. It does the thinking for you The telegraph, although not in prominent use today (just substitute the internet in its place), was the baby that went out with the bathwater. Images and lightning fast communication are a deadly combination, so the story goes. And this is tough to swallow. Photographs and long distance telephone calls would never have been invented with the intention of bringing down the social pattern of humans, right? But the fact remains, according to Postman, that is precisely what these developments are doing. But he offers no real solution. If anything, Amusing Ourselves to Death almost acts as a hey-look-at-what-social-trend-I-just-discovered book without giving us a way out of the mess. And if every American is willing to accept that the telegraph and the photograph were menacing inventions, then maybe we can bulldoze our way towards Neil Postman's utopia. That is, if you agree with it.
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Summary: Turn Off Your Television and Think For Yourself
Review: Most educated members of society have long recognized the danger of television. The cover of this book is a powerful image to illustrate the problem. Neil Postman takes a disturbing look at the social effects of television in "Amusing Ourselves to Death". While I may not agree with all of Postman's arguments, the book is able to make a strong statement about the dangers of television. My biggest objection to the book is the way Postman chooses to introduce his agrument against the televised media. He uses the novels "1984" and "Brave New World" as a backdrop for the his explanation of how American society become so listless and lethargic. A major rule I learned in undergraduate English was that you can not use fiction to support an argument. The idea in itself is absurd. It would be like using an episode of Star Trek to rationalize what kind of car you should buy. Once I got past this imperfection in the book, I found the author's statement to be reasonably solid. The basic idea discussed in this book is that when people learned by listening to teachers who accumulated knowledge, people were better learners. This is because the learner had to assimilate the knowledge into their brain and could ask questions to help the learning process. The written word and later the typed word made the learner think as he/she read. This learned a high level brain function. Nevertheless, people were learning. Television is a low level brain activity, which means people are less likely to learn as they watch. Television is often the most significant teacher a child has since the mid 20th century. Yet television's goal is not to educate but to entertain. Even educational programs like "Sesame Street" are flashy and structured like a series of comercials. It is no surprise that children are not learning in school when teachers can never be as flashy as television. Postman looks at education, televangelism, and the news media in the book. He demonstrates how televised media has degraded each of these facets of American life. His attention to the lack of real learning from the news is particularly disturbing. The only time I can think of when news was not flashy and meant to be entertaining was on September 11, 2001. This should make the reader seriously question the news programs he/she watches. While Postman lacks a real solution to the problem, I feel this is excusable when we consider television's stranglehold on society. The only way around the problem is to be educated to know how to watch television. This is a disturbingly good read. It will be particularly appreciated by the minority who never or rarely turn on their television because of the poisonous venom it spews.
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Summary: An intriguing epistemological exploration
Review: Postman's book is an interesting and quick read examining the relationships between the primary means of communication in a society and epistemology. He traces the history of American media and American epistemology along with it to show the ways in which television, The Age of Show Business, and commercial culture have deteriorated America's capacity for public discourse. It's an intriguing thesis, handled exquisitely by Postman. Admittedly I believe that he does occasionally jump to some extreme conclusions in this book, and his insights are slightly dated (I can only imagine that his social prognosis would be even more terrifying today). However, the easy style and interesting ideas carry the reader through this book quickly and easilly, instilling ideas which will stick for long after the book is done. Another reviewer commented that perhaps Postman neglects the idea that we can turn our television's off, or assumes that books are better than TV because they are on paper. I think that this reviewer is missing the point of the book in its epistemological investigation of the subject. You can't just turn off the TV because you've grown up with the TV, you've been programmed by the programs to think along with the TV. Because television is at the forefront of our culture, there are certain mental skills which are fostered and others which are ignored which effects the way that we think, that's what epistemology is. It's not as easy as just turning it off or watching it less because it's already there, it's already in you and in your head and every aspect of the culture is driven by it. What is required is an awareness, a critical questioning to wake-up our culture and not just sit passively by while the TV tells us what the truth is, and the criteria by which we should define the truth. This book is not exhaustive in the subject matter, but like I said it's an easy read, packed with important ideas, and a perfect jumping off point for further media studies. I would recommend this to anyone interested in engaging their media.
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Summary: The Epistemology of Media
Review: (...) I think author Neil Postman has a lot of valuable things to say and reflect on. Several years ago I read his book Technopoly, which, along with several other books and articles I read at the time, led me to present a session at the 2001 TCEA convention entitled, "Remember the Luddites: Asking Critical Questions about Educational Technology." Technopoly was published in 1993, but now I have gone back to Postman's 1985 work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. It seems a bit dated, with the advent of the Internet and all the changes which have come as a result, but I found the book to be none-the-less quite relevant and worthwhile. His overall theme of how our society (esp in the US) is tending to become more and more focused on entertainment via multimedia has many implications not only in an educational arena, but also for everyday life-- in the way we set our priorities, and in the final analysis-- the ways we choose (hopefully intentionally) to spend our limited heartbeats. Those small choices day to day add up to have a considerably dramatic cumulative effect. And his point is well taken about our typical, cultural LACK of intentionality when it comes to our consumption of multimedia content-- esp. television programming. In the May 2004 edition of Wired magazine, an article entitled "Watch This Way" documents a conversation between various moguls and pundits of our ever-growing entertainment industry. I found Yair Landau of Sony Picture's comment that "There are three basic human entertainment experiences that go back to the cave: storytelling, game-playing, and music" to be compelling. Author William Gibson added to this list of basic entertainment experiences "being part of the tribe." I have been giving a fair amount of thought lately to the value and opportunities posed by digital storytelling authoring tools in the early 21st Century. Most of my thinking along these lines is very optimistic and energetic, but it is good to temper this enthusiasm with some sober analysis like Postman's. I wouldn't call this blog entry a book-review per se-- I more think of it as a few reflections about some key points Postman makes in the book that I would like to remember and others may find worthwhile as well. As Landau pointed out, the desire to seek entertainment through storytelling and music is most likely universal. These are drives which transcend time and space. I am reminded of the futurists in the early part of the twentieth century (I think) who predicted that technology would lead to vast amounts of leisure time for people: with washing machines, dishwashers, and speedy cooking devices, people would have loads of free time to pursue other activities which were unthinkable in earlier times. I have laughed at that seemingly ridiculous prediction in the past, because today in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we seem to generally be harried, stressed, busy people who do not have enough time in the day for all the activities and demands which fill our schedules and minds. Yet despite all this busyness, we are clearly still finding large amounts of time to spend watching TV and entertaining ourselves in other ways. According to the Wired article previously cited, more and more Americans are watching LESS television today, but spending more time playing electronic games and surfing the Internet. That was not a trendline predicted by Postman in 1984. But we shouldn't be too hard on him for that oversight, Bill Gates apparently didn't see the Internet coming either. Despite this fact, Postman's analysis about our apparent intrinsic drive to seek entertainment via multimedia is still a cogent thesis for 21st century netizens.
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Summary: Devastating and Funny
Review: Borrowing from Marshall McLuhan, Communication Arts professor Neil Postman adopts the thesis that the 'medium is the metaphor' by arguing that "each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, expression, and sensibility" (10). McLuhan argued that the medium is the message; Postman carries it one step further by demonstrating that the 'medium is the metaphor." He illustrates this by showing how the Cherokee Indians would communicate to multiple peoples separated by distance via smoke signals. While not knowing the nature of the discourse, Postman draws the inference that it probably did not contain philosophical argumentation because you cannot use smoke to do philosophy. The metaphor's form excludes the content (7). Postman illustrates this in the negative using the second commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth. Wondering why God would make such a decree, Postman infers, "it is a strange injunction [second commandment] to include in part of one's ethical system unless its author assume a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture" (9, emphasis his). This book is more relavant today than when it was first written. I live in a dorm and see people wasting their brains on video games (which I deem more dangerous than television). By the way, and I do not know how many reviewers caught this, Postman is not categorically bashing television. He notes how this has been a blessing in the lives of the elderly and the infirm. I thought this was a master stroke of sympathy and I commend him for it.
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Summary: Still the best!
Review: Although this book was written in 1986, it's still the best book of its type I've come across. It's pithy, focused, articulate, and smart, and devoid of the "academic gobbly-gook, turgid, quasi-illuminating, look how smart I am" school of scholarship. It's actually very well-written. If anything, Postman demonstrates that there are some social commentators who actually have a mastery of good English prose. Such talents were once considered important, say, in the way the oratory of Lincoln was or the satire of Mencken was or the smoothness of Orwell's style. Thus, in a sense, Postman's ideas are excellent, but what clinches his work for me is that he demonstrates that the written word really can thrive and convey meaning elegantly if we paid more attention. Unfortunately I think we're losing it to just the force Postman is suggesting: the mass media. Postman shows us that you can't write about society with elegance and intelligence just because you think a lot or think you know a lot. You should also brush up on your Shakespeare. Addendum! April 8 2004. Who would have thunk it? First pages of newspapers around the U.S. have reported a new study that powerfully links loss of attention span among infants in proportion to the amount of TV they watch.
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Summary: Truly a must read for Americans
Review: I'm sure I won't have anything to say about this book that someone else hasn't already said here. Yes, the book is now almost 20 years old, so it takes some memory stretching to get back to some of his examples, but it is perfectly clear that nothing about television has really changed, at least not for the better, since publication. Even though this book has very little to say about religion, I would love to see churches study this book in small group meetings. Since pretty much nothing has a greater influence on our culture than television, it is worthwhile to take some time and look at what telesision means and how it works as a medium. For those unfamiliar with the book, I will just say that one of the greatest insights I saw in it is that tv is at its worst (and possibly most dangerous) when it attempts to be "serious". Just read it.
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Summary: Aldous Huxley's soma
Review: Neil Postman was a media ecologist. Las Vegas is entirely devoted to entertainment. Journalists spend more time with blow dryers than with scripts. Economics is less science than performance art. There has been a media metaphor shift. Epistemology is concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge. Television is a philosophy of rhetoric. A metaphor of generative force has resonance, acquires universal significance. Truth is a kind of cultural prejudice. The author asserts that public discourse has changed. The settlers of America were dedicated and skillful readers. Knowledge was made manifest through the printed page. Reading was not an elitist activity. The Lyceum Movement had as its purpose the diffusion of knowledge. Oratory was based on the printed word. People of television culture need plain language. The listeners at the Lincoln and Douglas debates were grandchildren of the Enlightenment. Lincoln and Douglas wrote all their speeches and planned their rebuttals in writing in advance. Their listeners were able to process the information. Reading encourages rationality. The printed word in the past had a monopoly on intelligence and intellect. Reading had a sacred element in it because there was little leisure. The telegraph destroyed the prevailing definition of information. The photograph was the perfect complement to the telegraph, a flood of headlines. Unfortunately the sense of context was largely illusory. Currently our use of other media is largely orchestrated by television. Television is now the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe. Every technology has an agenda of its own. American television is dedicated to supplying its audience with entertainment. A television news show is a stylized dramatic performance. Television is the paradigm for our conception of public information. In the age of television the paragraph has become the unit of news. It is now inevitable that Americans accomodate themselves to the philosophy of the television commercial. Television is a speed of light medium, a present-centered medium. Sesame Street undermines the traditional idea of school. Sesame Street does not encourage children to love school, it encourages them to love television. John Dewey said the least important thing about learning is the content of the lesson. Television is the third great crisis in education, following the invention of the alphabet and the printing press. Television has the attention and the cognitive habits of the youth. It requires no prerequisites, and has no perplexity and exposition. Postman makes the case forcefully and well that a substantial and significant change in the relationship of media to education is at hand.
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