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Summary: Antidote 4 Madison Avenue's Commercial Mass Media Onslaught!
Review: Like a previous reviewer, I've been skeptical about the effects of commercial television, radio, music, magz, etc on me for some time. If you feel manipulated by the pro-consumerist propaganda satiating our airwaves, but can't break your addiction to the entertainment, this title is for you. It helped me to develop a more accurate understanding of the effects of popular TV/Radio/Magz on my conciousness. Postman succinctly reasons why mass media can be harmful to your health. He delves into the psychology behind the commercials and the bias of mediums, specifically typography vs, television. The short book(160+ pgs Penguin paperback) took me several months to finish because of its plethora of meticulously crafted ideas - many leaving behind mushroom clouds in my mind. After reading this book, I decided to pick up Huxley's "Brave New World". If you haven't read it, check it out. Mustapha Mond would definitely have kept "Amusing Ourselves to Death" in his safe! And I'm not sure if TV/Radio etc is the "soma" or the "hypnopaedic conditioning" - or both. But, you definitely don't have to look 600 years into the future to see some traces of the issues he raises, such as mass media's homogenizing effect on society. Are we being Bokanovskified? Postman has hereby penned a survivors manual - coincidentally released in 1984, yet eschewing Orwell's prophecy in favor of Huxley's vision. I hope that in a subsequent edition Postman addresses the epistimology of the burgeoning internet and its world wide web that may someday esnare us all just like TV.
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Summary: Exposè of the Attractive, Yet Marred Communication Via TV
Review: Postman has made a persuasive case for the position that the medium used to communicate a message has a qualitative effect on the content and context of the message. If Mr. Postman is correct, our culture is being seduced into a dangerous and disjointed virtual reality and will have great difficulty with objectivity and with abstract and imaginative thinking.
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Summary: WHOA!: Beware of sexism, racism, and classism!
Review: Yes, this book is a powerful indictment of media culture. BUT it also "laments" rather than critiques, longing for a past that was "better" only for white, educated, Christian men! Look out for the minefields of Native American slur jokes, omission of statistics about women (or placement into parentheses of these facts), ignorance of the immigrant experience, and implicit denial of slavery. Postman is so wonderful in some ways, it is deeply sad he is so biased by his white maleness that he boasts of ideal literacy rates in the 1800s while all I can think of is that slaves were forbidden from this pursuit, women weren't educated, and immigrants worked in factories or mines. Only white men can truly be enthralled with such a book, and that is sad, because it is so politically perceptive and powerful in its attack on media otherwise. Don't say things were better in the past, just say things have always been oppressive (literacy was also about the oppression of the oral culture of the Native peoples whose country this was first!) and the argument will be much less foolish in the early chapters.
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Summary: Chewing Gum for the Eyes...
Review: An excellent analysis of the cultural changes wrought by America's transition from a typographic to a telemedia culture, concentrating principally on the deleterious alterations in the public mindset engendered by television. Never an alarmist, Postman's sound reasoning is matched by his excellent observations and his considerable attunement to the zeitgeist. Like Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, which also dealt with late 20th century sociological and cultural changes (for the worse), this is one of those rare books that has grown *more* timely and topical since the time it was first published.
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Summary: Read this book if you watch television ...
Review: In "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman argues that television has become an intoxicating "command center" of American culture that has distracted from and trivialized seemingly important aspects of our lives. In journalism, religion, politics and education, Postman prophetically points out the Huxleyan onset of a 'Brave New World' of bite size, touch-and-go media bombardment, happily consumed and rarely questioned, that has invariably impacted our society's discourse and rationale.
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Summary: ANTIDOTE FOR VIDEO ADDICTION
Review: When I spotted this book in the bookstore, I knew it was heaven-sent. Convicted that television and movies have co-opted more and more of my time and attention, I was desperate for change. If the measure of a worthwhile book is that it addresses a vital issue and then motivates change in light of what it reveals, this book proved most worthwhile. Reading it has prompted a seismic shift in the way I use my time - especially a displacement of The Tube with books. Postman issues a wakeup call - not to the entertainment industry, as one Amazon.com reviewer commented - but to us, the entertainment consumer-addicts!
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Summary: Finally, A Clear Presentation Of The Menace That Is TV
Review: A very significant, enlightened examination of the erosion of the thought process in today's culture. The logic is most convincing. Although this book reads like an educational text-book, its message is hard to pass up or find irrelevant. If you have found yourself not quite being able to put your finger on the source of our society's ills, this book will make sense of it for you.
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Summary: "TELEVISION MENTALITY" EXPLAINED!
Review: After you read this book you will throw away your TV and demand legislation to prohibit children from ever watching one! TV is only a form of entertainment and must never, ever be considered a form of education. Our nation thinks, acts and demands on the basis of reality as portrayed by television. If nothing else, at least try a week away from the damn thing. READ THIS BOOK, NOW!
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Summary: Boy...was Huxley right!!
Review: This is a stimulating exploration of communication. Postman gives an excellent comparison between written and spoken traditions. In an example, Postman tells us if of an African tribe that solves its disputes by referring to its "library of SPOKEN sayings" and wisdom until a phrase is found to be satisfactory to both parties.
It is a safe bet that most Americans have no idea The United States was ONCE probably the most literate and book hungry country in the world. That would be willing to listen to SEVEN HOURS of debates between LINCOLN & DOUGLAS and deified famous literary authors like Dickens when he visited the United States.
As a computer professional I am both fascinated by and terrified of Technology.
Postman rightly suggests the reading of Brave New World to show us what can happen if we become truly enslaved to technology not by pain , but by pleasure.
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Summary: Kill your television...or kill your mind
Review: The premise of Amusing Ourselves to Death is that the medium of television has injured and is injuring the ability of individuals and the culture as a whole to reason - - to think. Although the degree of injury is not quantified and is probably not quantifiable, it is evidenced in every area of human endeavor, from politics, news, education and religion. Postman observes that we are becoming "a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment." (1) Postman compares the process of consuming and processing information in our culture to that of past, "print-based" cultures: "...the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute." (24) Postman discusses the overwhelming volume of information that is stripped of any contextual basis but is presented within a "pseudo-context." "A pseudo-context is a structure invented to give fragmented and irrelevant informaion a seeming use.... The pseudo-context is the last refuge, so to say, of a culture overwhelmed by irrelevance, incoherence, and impotence."(76) In regard to our historical underpinnings, "...we are being rendered unfit to remember. For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, it requires a contextual basis - a theory, a vision, a metaphor - something within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned." "...with media whose structure is biased toward furnishing images and fragments, we are deprived of access to an historical perspective. In the absence of continuity and context, bits of information cannot be integrated into an intelligent and consistent whole."(137) In short, this is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. It should be required reading for every thinking American.
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