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cassiakarin's review against another edition
4.0
Whenever I bring this book up to people who are "In the know" about anything, their first comment to me is, "Ah, a classic." I now can see why. For though this book was written in the 1980s, the foundational principles explained in its pages carry a weight of wisdom for all ages proceeding it. I was a tad distracted by the explicit references to current trends and affairs used in the book because of their datedness, but that did not deter my eagerness to hear out the still very relevant points. In fact, I marveled and chuckled at his own shock of the current mental capacities and societal declines compared to my own experience nearly forty years later. I longed to hear his opinion of today's society, and of social media rather than television news!
There were parts of the book that If found a bit difficult, a bit hardy in the best way, which was a needed challenge and a somewhat humbling as I put myself in the context of his criticisms regarding the growing lack of basic rationality and ability to reason through or articulate argumentation.
Overall, this was a needed book for my philosophical understanding of the world and helped me gain and better understanding of where our society and culture has come from, and more importantly, why it is where it is today.
There were parts of the book that If found a bit difficult, a bit hardy in the best way, which was a needed challenge and a somewhat humbling as I put myself in the context of his criticisms regarding the growing lack of basic rationality and ability to reason through or articulate argumentation.
Overall, this was a needed book for my philosophical understanding of the world and helped me gain and better understanding of where our society and culture has come from, and more importantly, why it is where it is today.
azureyoshi's review against another edition
4.0
It's impressive the points of this book still hold up as well as they do, even with the advent of the internet. This book is a good overview of the transition society made with the advent of the idiot box, as well as the unintended consequences of doing so.
adrian_h's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
There aren’t just a lot of parallels to our world right now, but it goes beyond that. Every issue mentioned is a lot worse now. Internet and social media particular exasperate every issue mentioned here.
The immediacy and glut of useless information lacking in depth, context and history. The constant attempts at packaging education and learning as entertainment. The assumption that the destination is some technical utopia that solves all our problems without the examination if the current direction of travel is indeed making things better or worse. The writer’s reflection on “Now this…”, newscasters quickly moving on from some terrible disaster to some other unconnected event seems benign compared to what doomscrolling through TikTok videos looks like now.
It’s an old book, but more relevant than ever. AI will again make these issues worse than TV, internet 1.0, and social media ever did.
The immediacy and glut of useless information lacking in depth, context and history. The constant attempts at packaging education and learning as entertainment. The assumption that the destination is some technical utopia that solves all our problems without the examination if the current direction of travel is indeed making things better or worse. The writer’s reflection on “Now this…”, newscasters quickly moving on from some terrible disaster to some other unconnected event seems benign compared to what doomscrolling through TikTok videos looks like now.
It’s an old book, but more relevant than ever. AI will again make these issues worse than TV, internet 1.0, and social media ever did.
soupcocoon's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
Extremely readable and relevant. I'm always interested in how media shape messages especially with the shitshow social media has been lately and I found the arguments very compelling. Unfortunately in my experience Postman was right that education about being media conscious can only go so far; I think we all know the dangers of digital media but for most of us that doesn't change our actions too much. I also liked how Huxley was brought in.
kcrouth's review against another edition
4.0
Amusing Ourselves to Death is an excellent overview of how the US has moved away from being a nation of readers and rational thinkers, and become a society whose primary mode of communication is entertainment via sound bites and images. The specific focus is on television (published in 1985) but the parallels in other media are unmistakable. This book gives a chilling reality to the predictions of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, which I read in the last year. There are no sure solutions offered, but some suggestions are given. Most frightening to me is that there may be no way out of our soma induced bliss. The present reality of Trump is clearly a symptom of the dysfunctional state of our national "thought", communication and collective intelligence. We are an Idiocracy!