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1.03k reviews for:
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman
4.03 AVERAGE
1.03k reviews for:
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman
4.03 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
informative
sad
medium-paced
There are some strong premises here and the concerns are/were def. real, but the tone lands like an old man yelling at clouds. I didn’t find much in the way of solutions or even suggestions, which left me wondering what the point was beyond “TV is making us stupid and ruining our culture and I'm smart for pointing it out.” It doesn’t take wisdom to define problems. We can all do that. It's called "bitching." The real intelligence is in finding solutions. Sure television had its downsides, but it also brought value, and dismissing it without exploring alternatives feels more suited to a blog/magazine piece than a full book. For a work this length, I wanted researched, actionable ideas, not just fodder for group think and the self satisfied nods of fellow curmudgeons. I can't even imagine what the author would do witnessing what our genuine cultural damage looks like today.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Not sure if there’s any new ideas. Basically all entertainment is just bread and circuses. Interesting thought that reading the news or keeping up with it gives us the illusion that we are involved, and that we matter, or can make a difference. Some ideas I don’t really think were explored or thought about fully. At the end he states that most people don’t know when the alphabet was invented - is this not just another example of a menial fact he criticised earlier? What difference does it make when it was invented, when we are so far beyond that mattering at this point?
I heard about this book for the first time years ago and I knew it would be right up my street. The effects of technology and entertainment on humanity is basically what’s filling up my brain dawn till dusk and I’m always always in the mood to read about it.
So, I held off reading this until I had read both 1984 and Brave New World because I was aware he references them both. The first thing I’ll say is I really didn’t need to do that. If you’re interested in reading this, Postman explains the relevant comparison between 1984 and BNW perfectly well (and without spoiling the plot of either).
The book itself is really quite short, it reads like a long essay. Although Postman is writing in the 1980s about television, blissfully unaware of TikTok or iPad kids, the argument he makes is .. like… scarily prescient. Even in the intro you’re like “oh fuck”.
There’s a great chapter near the beginning on the state of public discourse and culture in America pre and post the invention of the new-fangled tech of the telegraph and the photograph. This was genuinely fascinating, and shows just how huge a paradigm shift in human experience can come with new technologies.
I really liked how clear and concise his language was. He’s very good at explaining what he means. The only points of confusion were his 80s America cultural references - although the Reagan and Sesame Street references still work pretty good.
I seriously wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone. It’s very hard (impossible?) to make sense of our 21st century screen world, and Postman goes some way to articulating eg how a decontextualised mess of information being beamed into our heads on a daily basis has got us here. And he does it from the past!
Also it’s teeny tiny short book! It won’t take you long! And then I’ll be most pleased and excited to be able to discuss it with a friend!
So, I held off reading this until I had read both 1984 and Brave New World because I was aware he references them both. The first thing I’ll say is I really didn’t need to do that. If you’re interested in reading this, Postman explains the relevant comparison between 1984 and BNW perfectly well (and without spoiling the plot of either).
The book itself is really quite short, it reads like a long essay. Although Postman is writing in the 1980s about television, blissfully unaware of TikTok or iPad kids, the argument he makes is .. like… scarily prescient. Even in the intro you’re like “oh fuck”.
There’s a great chapter near the beginning on the state of public discourse and culture in America pre and post the invention of the new-fangled tech of the telegraph and the photograph. This was genuinely fascinating, and shows just how huge a paradigm shift in human experience can come with new technologies.
I really liked how clear and concise his language was. He’s very good at explaining what he means. The only points of confusion were his 80s America cultural references - although the Reagan and Sesame Street references still work pretty good.
I seriously wholeheartedly recommend this book to everyone. It’s very hard (impossible?) to make sense of our 21st century screen world, and Postman goes some way to articulating eg how a decontextualised mess of information being beamed into our heads on a daily basis has got us here. And he does it from the past!
Also it’s teeny tiny short book! It won’t take you long! And then I’ll be most pleased and excited to be able to discuss it with a friend!
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
this was an interesting and enlightening read. written in the 80s, it’s interesting to consider what he would have to say about social networking and media—he didn’t even know about tik tok brainrot, the modern progression from what he was discussing in the novel. i wouldn’t necessarily say i enjoyed it (content slightly too relevant) but it was informative.
Reading this was a strange sensation. On the surface, it's hugely outdated. He's writing in the mid-late eighties when television is still the most powerful medium and computers, while they exist are "overrated". He discusses Reagan's falsehoods and Television's inability to hold him to account due to a fundamental unseriousness. All this seems like a dim, forgotten age to us now, and yet he still has a lot to say about how the medium is (to borrow from another well-known book he refers to often) the message. The way we experience the content of TV shows distorts their meaning and the place they hold in our imaginations.
Apply this to 2020, when text and video are fused together in a way they never were in the twentieth century, but with very little ability to verify the "facts" that swim into our social media feeds every day. Wheel Trump onto the stage, and you can see the Reagan era played out a thousand times more glaringly. It's so jarringly current it makes your head spin, and he really does come up with some answers to why we're in this mess, and why we have lost the ability to think critically: because news is no longer something we think about, weigh up, take action on, it's just content, like cat videos and conspiray theories and jokes.
Apply this to 2020, when text and video are fused together in a way they never were in the twentieth century, but with very little ability to verify the "facts" that swim into our social media feeds every day. Wheel Trump onto the stage, and you can see the Reagan era played out a thousand times more glaringly. It's so jarringly current it makes your head spin, and he really does come up with some answers to why we're in this mess, and why we have lost the ability to think critically: because news is no longer something we think about, weigh up, take action on, it's just content, like cat videos and conspiray theories and jokes.
Proving the Samford Bee wrong, one packed book at a time…
This book is rather outdated and I’m afraid Neil Postman would be clutching his pearls at the fractionalization and further de-contextualization of our media today. Despite its age, much of what he says about the technologies we use forming our values still ring true. He makes the point that while printed books are a technology that provide a “coherent and usable past,” the epistemology of visual media is bent towards entertainment and discrete stories, without any dialogue with the past or present environments. Anyway I have no idea what Postman would think about me logging this entry on my book social media but here I am.
This book is rather outdated and I’m afraid Neil Postman would be clutching his pearls at the fractionalization and further de-contextualization of our media today. Despite its age, much of what he says about the technologies we use forming our values still ring true. He makes the point that while printed books are a technology that provide a “coherent and usable past,” the epistemology of visual media is bent towards entertainment and discrete stories, without any dialogue with the past or present environments. Anyway I have no idea what Postman would think about me logging this entry on my book social media but here I am.
I enjoyed the ideas put forth by this book, though the writing was particularly pedantic. I'd love to see an updated version of this or a recent commentary.
Best thing about this book is its title. I got this as a recommendation from a family member but I should have asked if he read it before having me read it.
For two hours of my life, I listened to this guy have a conversation with himself and he thought he was the smartest person in the freaking room. I didn’t find anything of interest. Granted, this book was published in 1985 so duh! So many things were not relevant anymore. Yeah yeah maybe I could’ve done more to reflect on how this text is still relevant.
For two hours of my life, I listened to this guy have a conversation with himself and he thought he was the smartest person in the freaking room. I didn’t find anything of interest. Granted, this book was published in 1985 so duh! So many things were not relevant anymore. Yeah yeah maybe I could’ve done more to reflect on how this text is still relevant.