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A review by eb333
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
5.0
This book will, I hope, change my life for the better. I would highly recommend this to everyone I know, especially Millennials and Gen-Zers whose screen time usage is as high as mine.
Postman posits that television as a medium of communication is best suited for amusement, not for serious discourse in the realms of education, politics, religion, or anything else. The telegraph, or instantaneous transmission of information, led to the "large-scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence [of information]... The abundant flow of information had very little or nothing to do with those to whom it was addressed; that is, with any social or intellectual context in which their lives were embedded... Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation." Similarly, photographs "re-create the world as a series of idiosyncratic events." Without the ability to put forth an argument, reason, or tell a story, photographs again atomize the world into a series of unrefutable yet only amusing pieces of information.
When combined into the phenomena of television, this new form of communication promotes incoherence and triviality. Every TV show and commercial jolts you from one scene or topic to the next with a speed that produces vertigo. "Thinking" does not play well on television, and viewers will change the channel if they encounter content that requires any sort of prerequisite, or perplexes them in the slightest. This incentivizes shows and commercials (and political or societal discourse?) to make themselves more self-contained, less mentally taxing, and more entertaining. Have you seen a recent political debate (on TV, of course) and thought, "Wow, the candidates really knew the details of their positions and communicated them in such a way that I can be confident that I have a full view of both sides of this issue and can vote accordingly"? Me either. I've been very entertained, though. Our culture has changed so that we "no longer talk to each other, we entertain each other. We do not exchange ideas; we exchange images [memes, anyone?]. We do not argue with propositions. We argue with good looks, celebrities, and commercials."
The issue, at least the issue that Postman is dealing with, isn't that a new form of media has arisen that is entertaining. Rather, it is that we are trying to take this entertaining medium and have serious public discourse in and around it. We convince ourselves that "Sesame Street" teaches our children the alphabet when it really teaches them that learning may be done effectively by sitting in one place while doing exactly what television requires of them - listening to and staring at a screen. We convince ourselves that we're well-informed because we watch the news, while in actuality knowing "of" something is far inferior to knowing "about" it, and we likely know more "of" the last 24 hours than we know "about" the last five centuries of fifty years.
This book was written 21 years before Twitter came to be, but I can't help but see how prophetic Postman has been - Twitter, or any other form of social media, is like television on steroids, and it's clear our society's continued attempts at using these new, more-entertaining media for serious discourse are not working. Conversations on Twitter quickly devolve to ad hominem arguments. Facebook has become a breeding ground for political misinformation. How can you possibly posit and then expound upon any idea within 144 or 288 characters?
I plan to change my media intake to better reflect the uses for which each medium is best suited. I've known for a while now that social media and video don't engage my brain like the written word does, and now I'm able to understand better and put into words precisely why.
Postman posits that television as a medium of communication is best suited for amusement, not for serious discourse in the realms of education, politics, religion, or anything else. The telegraph, or instantaneous transmission of information, led to the "large-scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence [of information]... The abundant flow of information had very little or nothing to do with those to whom it was addressed; that is, with any social or intellectual context in which their lives were embedded... Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation." Similarly, photographs "re-create the world as a series of idiosyncratic events." Without the ability to put forth an argument, reason, or tell a story, photographs again atomize the world into a series of unrefutable yet only amusing pieces of information.
When combined into the phenomena of television, this new form of communication promotes incoherence and triviality. Every TV show and commercial jolts you from one scene or topic to the next with a speed that produces vertigo. "Thinking" does not play well on television, and viewers will change the channel if they encounter content that requires any sort of prerequisite, or perplexes them in the slightest. This incentivizes shows and commercials (and political or societal discourse?) to make themselves more self-contained, less mentally taxing, and more entertaining. Have you seen a recent political debate (on TV, of course) and thought, "Wow, the candidates really knew the details of their positions and communicated them in such a way that I can be confident that I have a full view of both sides of this issue and can vote accordingly"? Me either. I've been very entertained, though. Our culture has changed so that we "no longer talk to each other, we entertain each other. We do not exchange ideas; we exchange images [memes, anyone?]. We do not argue with propositions. We argue with good looks, celebrities, and commercials."
The issue, at least the issue that Postman is dealing with, isn't that a new form of media has arisen that is entertaining. Rather, it is that we are trying to take this entertaining medium and have serious public discourse in and around it. We convince ourselves that "Sesame Street" teaches our children the alphabet when it really teaches them that learning may be done effectively by sitting in one place while doing exactly what television requires of them - listening to and staring at a screen. We convince ourselves that we're well-informed because we watch the news, while in actuality knowing "of" something is far inferior to knowing "about" it, and we likely know more "of" the last 24 hours than we know "about" the last five centuries of fifty years.
This book was written 21 years before Twitter came to be, but I can't help but see how prophetic Postman has been - Twitter, or any other form of social media, is like television on steroids, and it's clear our society's continued attempts at using these new, more-entertaining media for serious discourse are not working. Conversations on Twitter quickly devolve to ad hominem arguments. Facebook has become a breeding ground for political misinformation. How can you possibly posit and then expound upon any idea within 144 or 288 characters?
I plan to change my media intake to better reflect the uses for which each medium is best suited. I've known for a while now that social media and video don't engage my brain like the written word does, and now I'm able to understand better and put into words precisely why.