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A review by rick2
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
4.0
3.5/5
Good little book. It’s kind of a pseudo-philosophy text in which the author attempts to look back at advances in technological communication and their impact across time. I think it does a good job and what results is an incredibly thought-provoking book about how television (and the natural extrapolations into social media) is changing the method of discourse in American society. I think the book is that it’s best when it points to the differences in communication from pamphlet era 1800s, to modern talking heads each speaking for five minutes apiece on TV about some sort of significant event. It’s the tokenization of ideas which is only becoming more pronounced with social media.
That being said this book doesn’t really rely on much more to make its case then Anecdotal evidence and I think as a result it misses the broader picture of some of the trends post television and information consumption. He presents a sort of romanticized version of the past, talking about boys pushing plows with a book in their hands. Have you ever pushed a plow? There’s not a lot of time for reading. Also, the 1800s were a terrible time for loads of people, so despite their proposed cognitive abilities, I’m a little hesitant to idolize them.
Don’t mistake me as a fan of Joe Rogan but his long form, three hour plus, interviews are a really fascinating as a cultural phenomenon. I regularly watch long form YouTube videos about obscure Roman battles and other topics. Heck the most popular TV show a couple years ago was a long form hours long series epic called Game of Thrones. I think Postman‘s account fundamentally misses the mark and is somehow conflating causation with correlation here. I noticed this strongly when he was talking about religion and the inability of television to provide a sacred space. It seemed a bit “old man yells at cloud.”
Technology changes the method of imparting information, Postman convincingly argues about how different a medium television is, but I don’t think I’m convinced that is somehow fundamentally altering the psychology of the populace or eroding away our cognitive abilities, that’s what TikTok is doing.
Good little book. It’s kind of a pseudo-philosophy text in which the author attempts to look back at advances in technological communication and their impact across time. I think it does a good job and what results is an incredibly thought-provoking book about how television (and the natural extrapolations into social media) is changing the method of discourse in American society. I think the book is that it’s best when it points to the differences in communication from pamphlet era 1800s, to modern talking heads each speaking for five minutes apiece on TV about some sort of significant event. It’s the tokenization of ideas which is only becoming more pronounced with social media.
That being said this book doesn’t really rely on much more to make its case then Anecdotal evidence and I think as a result it misses the broader picture of some of the trends post television and information consumption. He presents a sort of romanticized version of the past, talking about boys pushing plows with a book in their hands. Have you ever pushed a plow? There’s not a lot of time for reading. Also, the 1800s were a terrible time for loads of people, so despite their proposed cognitive abilities, I’m a little hesitant to idolize them.
Don’t mistake me as a fan of Joe Rogan but his long form, three hour plus, interviews are a really fascinating as a cultural phenomenon. I regularly watch long form YouTube videos about obscure Roman battles and other topics. Heck the most popular TV show a couple years ago was a long form hours long series epic called Game of Thrones. I think Postman‘s account fundamentally misses the mark and is somehow conflating causation with correlation here. I noticed this strongly when he was talking about religion and the inability of television to provide a sacred space. It seemed a bit “old man yells at cloud.”
Technology changes the method of imparting information, Postman convincingly argues about how different a medium television is, but I don’t think I’m convinced that is somehow fundamentally altering the psychology of the populace or eroding away our cognitive abilities, that’s what TikTok is doing.