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ajreader's review against another edition
4.0
Read my full thoughts over at Read.Write.Repeat.
I really cannot begin to express all my thoughts on this book. I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy if you have never read it before. You won't be sorry. You may not agree with all of Postman's points either, but he has a lot of extremely valuable insights and observations. If nothing else, he will make you think about the constant barrage of media content we consume.
I really cannot begin to express all my thoughts on this book. I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy if you have never read it before. You won't be sorry. You may not agree with all of Postman's points either, but he has a lot of extremely valuable insights and observations. If nothing else, he will make you think about the constant barrage of media content we consume.
classical_learner's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
kommissar28's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
5.0
thejdizzler's review against another edition
5.0
Very important book that closely echoes Marshall McLuhan's the Medium is the message. Postman's thesis is basically that TV as a cultural medium promotes certain aspects in all forms of communication: fragmentedness, superficiality and a focus on visual stimuli over non-visual ideas. He contrasts our TV-based culture pretty unfavourably with the pre-civil war American print based culture. I don't know enough about the period to really know if he's being accurate but my intuition is yes.
Postman also brings up the concept of blindness to the consequences of technology in this book. Some technologies, like the automobile or the computer, basically force everyone in society to adopt them, despite the negative consequences of their use. This really doesn't jive well with me, and makes me extremely skeptical of the naive techno-optimism of many of my friends.
Super glad my parents raised me without TV, but I'm also nervous about the internet as an even more dangerous cultural force. Too bad postman isn't with us anymore, would love to hear his take.
Postman also brings up the concept of blindness to the consequences of technology in this book. Some technologies, like the automobile or the computer, basically force everyone in society to adopt them, despite the negative consequences of their use. This really doesn't jive well with me, and makes me extremely skeptical of the naive techno-optimism of many of my friends.
Super glad my parents raised me without TV, but I'm also nervous about the internet as an even more dangerous cultural force. Too bad postman isn't with us anymore, would love to hear his take.
julicke95's review against another edition
5.0
A very important and insightful book, which I would recomend to anyone with a passing interest in media and their influence on our thinking and our culture. Contrary to what some believe, it is still very relevant today, because even more so than during the hayday of television, many societies today are dominated by media meant for entertainment and the epistemology underlying them. It is extremely readable and easy to understand. My only complaint is that Postman sometimes lapses into superfluous repetitions of certain points and ideas.
alok_pandey's review against another edition
4.0
This is such a fantastic existential irony that the material exhibits of human progress are the very exhibits of our personal and collective decay as a civilization.
I came across Neil Postman when I was reading [a:Cal Newport|147891|Cal Newport|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1542539623p2/147891.jpg]'s [b:Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World|25744928|Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447957962l/25744928._SY75_.jpg|45502249] -
"..the late communication theorist and New York University professor Neil Postman. Writing in the early 1990s, as the personal computer revolution first accelerated, Postman argued that our society was sliding into a troubling relationship with technology. We were, he noted, no longer discussing the trade-offs surrounding new technologies, balancing the new efficiencies against the new problems introduced. If it’s high-tech, we began to instead assume, then it’s good. Case closed.."
Postman, an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed technology, including personal computers in school and cruise control in cars, wrote in 1985 of an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. From education to social interactions to political questions, Postman observed that Americans wanted even the most serious and sincere topics to be presented before them in an entertaining form. This has deeper and often too subtle to be seen impacts on individual and social psyche.
This book is dedicated to one such mode of disseminating information - Television. An artifice of human ingenious, television was probably the most ubiquitous sign of 'a step up' one needs to perform to assure self and the others that s/he has made progress in life. Even in the most shanty houses in those urban fringes, that can't even survive a heavy rainfall, one most often than not, finds a television blaring off. I once noticed, when I was posted in Ahmadabad for some time, that a migrant family who had created a house out of their horse-cart on one side of the road had a color-television inside it. The father, meanwhile, was sleeping outside on the footpath.
Postman writes about how this 'entertainment machine' has essentially trivialized even the most complex discourses, how even those ordinary but priceless joys of a simple living have been tainted by the compulsions of show-business, how rapidly moving images have been slowly obliterating the importance of written words and how a vulgar vaudeville act of explicit descriptions have short-changed the sweet mystery of imagination.
Take the example of television commercials. It's not like we didn't have advertisements before, but with the advent of television, advertisements have rather taken a strange undesirable turn.
"The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country—these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas...The commercial asks us to believe that all problems are solvable, that they are solvable fast, and that they are solvable fast through the interventions of technology, techniques and chemistry."
He continues to write about how television, as a mode of communication, especially that of mass communication has effectively corrupted religion and politics. The following observation stands true for both religion and politics, and the fact that this was written more than 35 years ago, is nothing if not mind-blowing.
"the unwritten law of all television preachers: “You can get your share of the audience only by offering people something they want.”...You will note, I am sure, that this is an unusual religious credo. There is no great religious leader—from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther—who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is “user friendly.” It is too easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities..."
The best part, which I had read elsewhere, but which is brought with such stark clarity by Postman here in the context under discussion, is the ever interesting Orwell-Huxley Complement. Television, as he says, is not Orwellian, but actually Huxleyan.
“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
This is a phenomenal book, by any standards. The fact that Postman has turned out to be so impeccably prescient makes this book all the more valuable, and something that needs to be treasured in your book-chest and ought to be revisited again, and again.
I came across Neil Postman when I was reading [a:Cal Newport|147891|Cal Newport|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1542539623p2/147891.jpg]'s [b:Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World|25744928|Deep Work Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World|Cal Newport|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447957962l/25744928._SY75_.jpg|45502249] -
"..the late communication theorist and New York University professor Neil Postman. Writing in the early 1990s, as the personal computer revolution first accelerated, Postman argued that our society was sliding into a troubling relationship with technology. We were, he noted, no longer discussing the trade-offs surrounding new technologies, balancing the new efficiencies against the new problems introduced. If it’s high-tech, we began to instead assume, then it’s good. Case closed.."
Postman, an American author, educator, media theorist and cultural critic, who eschewed technology, including personal computers in school and cruise control in cars, wrote in 1985 of an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. From education to social interactions to political questions, Postman observed that Americans wanted even the most serious and sincere topics to be presented before them in an entertaining form. This has deeper and often too subtle to be seen impacts on individual and social psyche.
This book is dedicated to one such mode of disseminating information - Television. An artifice of human ingenious, television was probably the most ubiquitous sign of 'a step up' one needs to perform to assure self and the others that s/he has made progress in life. Even in the most shanty houses in those urban fringes, that can't even survive a heavy rainfall, one most often than not, finds a television blaring off. I once noticed, when I was posted in Ahmadabad for some time, that a migrant family who had created a house out of their horse-cart on one side of the road had a color-television inside it. The father, meanwhile, was sleeping outside on the footpath.
Postman writes about how this 'entertainment machine' has essentially trivialized even the most complex discourses, how even those ordinary but priceless joys of a simple living have been tainted by the compulsions of show-business, how rapidly moving images have been slowly obliterating the importance of written words and how a vulgar vaudeville act of explicit descriptions have short-changed the sweet mystery of imagination.
Take the example of television commercials. It's not like we didn't have advertisements before, but with the advent of television, advertisements have rather taken a strange undesirable turn.
"The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country—these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas...The commercial asks us to believe that all problems are solvable, that they are solvable fast, and that they are solvable fast through the interventions of technology, techniques and chemistry."
He continues to write about how television, as a mode of communication, especially that of mass communication has effectively corrupted religion and politics. The following observation stands true for both religion and politics, and the fact that this was written more than 35 years ago, is nothing if not mind-blowing.
"the unwritten law of all television preachers: “You can get your share of the audience only by offering people something they want.”...You will note, I am sure, that this is an unusual religious credo. There is no great religious leader—from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to Mohammed to Luther—who offered people what they want. Only what they need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they need. It is “user friendly.” It is too easy to turn off. It is at its most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities..."
The best part, which I had read elsewhere, but which is brought with such stark clarity by Postman here in the context under discussion, is the ever interesting Orwell-Huxley Complement. Television, as he says, is not Orwellian, but actually Huxleyan.
“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
This is a phenomenal book, by any standards. The fact that Postman has turned out to be so impeccably prescient makes this book all the more valuable, and something that needs to be treasured in your book-chest and ought to be revisited again, and again.
aspiringorakle's review against another edition
5.0
At the risk of sounding like a reactionary social theorist: amazing. This, especially in its fundamental concept (of how forms of media alter our ways of thinking) is wonderfully rich. I don't agree with him in totality (and he is clearly only talking about a certain kind of television), but his analysis is true as far as it goes. Eye-opening book.
nicholaspoe_'s review against another edition
5.0
This is a book that, if read carefully and thoughtfully, could actually change the way you see the world and live your daily life.
thejames's review against another edition
5.0
Postman's words are prophetic. When he predicted a Huxlian society of people inundated with pleasure and distraction, he couldn't have envisioned a game where the world is constantly glued to screens and filled with streams of video and images. He explores how society went from oral tradition, to the written word, to print and then to television. We've gone so much farther in the past 35 years.
You read his words and Donald Trump being president makes sense. He's a constant machine of decontextualized nonsense which is exactly what works best on television. Just another blurb to be swept away until the commercial breaks hit and tell you how your life sucks if you don't drink a named Coke this summer with your hot friends.
He makes a strong distinction between junk TV and more serious TV. He says no one is really threatened by junk TV because they know it's junk, but serious news has created a discourse about the world and fed us so much useless, in-actionable information that we're left with all sorts of trivial understandings of the world.
Postman hits on this idea I've had floating in my head for a few years now which is that I think being well-informed is a fool's errand. This is not to say one should live in ignorance, but Postman points out that the average newscast is filled with all kinds of information over which we can not possibly exert any control or provide any influence. To be up on the news is to be fed all kinds of sensationalized, shocking stories delivered by the most deadpan delivery. In making society more global, we find ourselves knowing far more about what is going on halfway around the world while the person next door is a complete enigma to us.
There is no context, no understanding of say how the latest development in Iran is a result of the past 100+ years of history. It's just another news bite in which talking heads who are the least informed people babble on about subjects they have no knowledge about and leave the viewer with the idea that they've gained some valuable talking point but in actuality have only geared up to make a fool of him/herself to anyone who actually has studied the subject. And by the end of any given newscast there will be 20 or so subjects given roughly the same amount of time, completely without context or structure and leaving the audience with a sense they should return to see how all this develops without understanding how any of it began in the first place.
I could go on about how Postman's critique of our shift to a television based society has left us worse off than we were before. The book is a short read, but to anyone who has lived with a TV, Postman will hit on so many deep truths that are taken for granted in a society so invaded by television that most people will probably have not even begun to question television like Postman does here.
If you read ten books in a lifetime, this should probably be one of them.
You read his words and Donald Trump being president makes sense. He's a constant machine of decontextualized nonsense which is exactly what works best on television. Just another blurb to be swept away until the commercial breaks hit and tell you how your life sucks if you don't drink a named Coke this summer with your hot friends.
He makes a strong distinction between junk TV and more serious TV. He says no one is really threatened by junk TV because they know it's junk, but serious news has created a discourse about the world and fed us so much useless, in-actionable information that we're left with all sorts of trivial understandings of the world.
Postman hits on this idea I've had floating in my head for a few years now which is that I think being well-informed is a fool's errand. This is not to say one should live in ignorance, but Postman points out that the average newscast is filled with all kinds of information over which we can not possibly exert any control or provide any influence. To be up on the news is to be fed all kinds of sensationalized, shocking stories delivered by the most deadpan delivery. In making society more global, we find ourselves knowing far more about what is going on halfway around the world while the person next door is a complete enigma to us.
There is no context, no understanding of say how the latest development in Iran is a result of the past 100+ years of history. It's just another news bite in which talking heads who are the least informed people babble on about subjects they have no knowledge about and leave the viewer with the idea that they've gained some valuable talking point but in actuality have only geared up to make a fool of him/herself to anyone who actually has studied the subject. And by the end of any given newscast there will be 20 or so subjects given roughly the same amount of time, completely without context or structure and leaving the audience with a sense they should return to see how all this develops without understanding how any of it began in the first place.
I could go on about how Postman's critique of our shift to a television based society has left us worse off than we were before. The book is a short read, but to anyone who has lived with a TV, Postman will hit on so many deep truths that are taken for granted in a society so invaded by television that most people will probably have not even begun to question television like Postman does here.
If you read ten books in a lifetime, this should probably be one of them.