Amusing Ourselves to Death

While it was grueling to get through the entire book, Neil Postman made some fantastic points in “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. I can not say that I agree with his “hard” media determinist viewpoints, but it would be difficult to disagree that public discourse has changed with technology, especially television.

We begin to think and express ourselves in different ways when we are exposed to a new medium. Postman says, “in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself” (14). With the shift from the magic of writing, to the magic of electronics, humans were automatically introduced to something that would change our culture in ways outside of the obvious.

Postman believes the age of television has presented shriveled and absurd information, while discourse in our print-based past was serious and rational. He uses the example of political debates of the past, where the audience could sit and listen for hours on end. The audience had longer attention spans compared to those of today, and understood complex thoughts and speeches. I agree with his thoughts completely, considering hours of political debating would be torturous for me. I do not view the people of the past to necessarily be “smarter” than those of today, but our mode of thought has definitely changed.

Postman moves on to talk about how the telegraph led to the rise of irrelevant information. People were exposed to news that hardly related to them, and therefore had so much information and nothing to do with it. It is ironic because in today’s society, some one who is not informed about what is happening in the world is said to be ignorant.
There is one point, however, that Postman fails to render my views on. Postman calls photography a “fierce assault” on language. Why is it negative for a photograph to speak a thousand words? Why can it not accompany, rather than compete, with written word? A photograph can show something that may not be easy to express in words. A photograph can be concise when conveying a message.

In a television word, Postman believes newscasters are beautiful people that mislead us with entertainment. Although I do agree that the news does seem very schizophrenic in the way it deals out information, there are news outlets that provide news that is necessary. Of course there has been hard news that has been sensationalized, but television is a way many people hear about timely and local news. Newspapers are essentially about yesterday, while television is quick enough to talk about today.

Politics, Religion, and education are three institutions Postman says have changed in their public discourse due to television. Politics has lost its seriousness, Religion has lost its “enchantment”, both replaced by entertainment. Growing up as a Sesame Street kid, Postman says that I have basically learned how to watch television, not count to ten. It is a difficult concept to accept, considering I feel as though I have learned at least some things from television shows. Postman goes on to say that the school curriculum is being threatened by television because students expect entertainment in the classroom. I do agree with this, and teachers who understand this concept are usually able to captivate students with ease.

Fast forward to the present (considering this book was written over 20 years ago). Although he barely touched upon the topic of the Internet, mainly because it was still considered a baby in the early 80s, I am curious to know what Postman would think about the growing popularity of the World Wide Web. Personally, I am now on a computer more than I watch TV. I also believe the Internet provides us with much more information than television. Of course not all of it is true, and the Internet is still a great medium for entertainment, but is it a completely different experience. People can focus on a story for as long as necessary while on a computer, instead of being told when to stop, which happens with television. Similarly to how television changed our culture and the way people think, I believe the Internet is slowly doing the same by reprogramming our brains.

Works Cited:
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.