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A review by bucketoffish
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
5.0
Despite being written in 1985, this book remains very relevant today. This is because it lays out a framework for understanding various aspects of communication which are independent of the specific medium being discussed, and would be relevant in any society at any point in time.
Specifically, I liked how Postman spent the first half of the book barely discussing television at all, despite it being one of the main focuses of the book. Instead, he discusses historical methods of information transfer, including verbal communication, print, and telegraphy, in order to lay out his theories. I liked his discussion on how various forms of communication reward certain forms of behavior over others, thus changing not only our methods of gathering information, but our societal definitions of intelligence. For example, in a verbal society the ability to memorize things was key to intelligence, while in a print society it's more important to be able to sit still and read silently for long periods of time. Characteristics such as not being able to sit still or having dyslexia, which are physical and visual-processing traits respectively, now factor into definitions of intelligence where they would not have in a verbal society. Furthermore, he talks about how certain media are suited to certain kinds of messages. For example, though it is possible to send long paragraphs of text via telegraph, it is more expedient to send short dispatches without including context or commentary.
I find these theories difficult to argue against, since I have observed them firsthand. My parents grew up in a mostly verbal society on the transition to a print one, and their education system highly valued memorization. Being able to memorize and recite hundreds of poems and essay passages was considered a sign of high intelligence, whereas in modern American society, which has long been print-based, such skills are largely seen as a pointless waste of time. I can see a difference between the thinking styles of people educated using the two systems. A memorization-based method, when extended to even topics such as math and science, creates people who are extremely quick and proficient at applying basic skills and methods, but who have a difficult time building mental schema which allow them to perform in new situations. This leads to a system where even the universities pump out poorly-researched or even plagiarized work. This is the issue that occurs when a society trained on one form of information transfer rapidly transitions to a different one.
On another note, I have noticed changes in recent years to how I personally gather information. Whereas before I could sit for a long time and read a book or do practice problems to learn a new topic, I now find it harder to achieve mastery in a subject this way. After reading this book, I realized that it was because my expectations for information gathering have changed in the internet age. Years of becoming proficient at searching for information on the internet have taught me to rapidly scan sources and skim passages, quickly searching through ten or twenty sources to zero in on a single word or sentence. I've learned how to find the specific information I need in seconds, due to the new information transfer medium of the internet. Reading for a long period of time is much more difficult than it used to be, partly because spending so long on a single topic now feels unusual and inefficient. However, I've become increasingly aware of how context-free this form of information gathering is. I can very rapidly find out where the thalamus is, read a bit about the function of the lateral geniculate nucleus, and look at the layers of the primary visual cortex, but outside of a conceptual framework these facts are just trivia. True knowledge can not be gained one sentence at a time, without prerequisites or context, and a serious examination of a topic that looks at multiple aspects should take at least a chapter or two.
Postman, when he gets to the topic of television, makes sure to point out that he is not against the use of TV for entertainment. His main argument is that television, when used for other purposes such as news or education, is still geared towards entertainment at the expense of actual information, due to the constraints of the medium. For example, live television rewards rapid changes in content and visuals, making it difficult to have lengthy discussions involving context and prerequisite knowledge. News programs are a good example of this, where serious topics are discussed in 2-5 minute intervals, which is not enough time to give anything other than surface level information. They are also frequently interrupted by commercials, each on the order of 10-15 seconds long. Stories are further juxtaposed, placed in self-contained context-free segments, with one story jumping to another with no time given to think or talk about the last one. Talk shows are another example. These shows do not reward actual discussion because stopping to think or having an unclear stance does not play well on TV. Instead, everybody comes in with prewritten statements and delivers them one after another. They all have to get done in an hour at the most, because live TV can not have shows that go for much longer. People tuning in during the middle of a discussion will not be able to follow along and will change the channel. Something like a university lecture series on a topic such as physics, where each lecture is 1.5 hours long and requires watching all the previous lectures, would never be able to play on live TV.
These observations may seem dated these days due to the availability of streaming shows and the internet, but they're actually still very relevant. A lot of people get their news from TV or from sites like Reddit and Twitter, where information is even more compressed, surface-level, and context-free. In fact, actual newspapers are now struggling to sustain themselves, and are often resorting to sensationalized headlines to compete. They're getting pushed out by newer forms of communication. This is the problem that Postman points out. We have a society that thinks it is informed, but is merely entertained. The solution he gives, given the bounds of realism, is for people to understand the problem and to realize what kind of information they are absorbing when they hear it. I think this message is more relevant than ever these days, due to the current political situation, extremely heightened partisanship, multiple anti-science movements, and all kinds of outrage movements being formed over snippets of misinformation.
Specifically, I liked how Postman spent the first half of the book barely discussing television at all, despite it being one of the main focuses of the book. Instead, he discusses historical methods of information transfer, including verbal communication, print, and telegraphy, in order to lay out his theories. I liked his discussion on how various forms of communication reward certain forms of behavior over others, thus changing not only our methods of gathering information, but our societal definitions of intelligence. For example, in a verbal society the ability to memorize things was key to intelligence, while in a print society it's more important to be able to sit still and read silently for long periods of time. Characteristics such as not being able to sit still or having dyslexia, which are physical and visual-processing traits respectively, now factor into definitions of intelligence where they would not have in a verbal society. Furthermore, he talks about how certain media are suited to certain kinds of messages. For example, though it is possible to send long paragraphs of text via telegraph, it is more expedient to send short dispatches without including context or commentary.
I find these theories difficult to argue against, since I have observed them firsthand. My parents grew up in a mostly verbal society on the transition to a print one, and their education system highly valued memorization. Being able to memorize and recite hundreds of poems and essay passages was considered a sign of high intelligence, whereas in modern American society, which has long been print-based, such skills are largely seen as a pointless waste of time. I can see a difference between the thinking styles of people educated using the two systems. A memorization-based method, when extended to even topics such as math and science, creates people who are extremely quick and proficient at applying basic skills and methods, but who have a difficult time building mental schema which allow them to perform in new situations. This leads to a system where even the universities pump out poorly-researched or even plagiarized work. This is the issue that occurs when a society trained on one form of information transfer rapidly transitions to a different one.
On another note, I have noticed changes in recent years to how I personally gather information. Whereas before I could sit for a long time and read a book or do practice problems to learn a new topic, I now find it harder to achieve mastery in a subject this way. After reading this book, I realized that it was because my expectations for information gathering have changed in the internet age. Years of becoming proficient at searching for information on the internet have taught me to rapidly scan sources and skim passages, quickly searching through ten or twenty sources to zero in on a single word or sentence. I've learned how to find the specific information I need in seconds, due to the new information transfer medium of the internet. Reading for a long period of time is much more difficult than it used to be, partly because spending so long on a single topic now feels unusual and inefficient. However, I've become increasingly aware of how context-free this form of information gathering is. I can very rapidly find out where the thalamus is, read a bit about the function of the lateral geniculate nucleus, and look at the layers of the primary visual cortex, but outside of a conceptual framework these facts are just trivia. True knowledge can not be gained one sentence at a time, without prerequisites or context, and a serious examination of a topic that looks at multiple aspects should take at least a chapter or two.
Postman, when he gets to the topic of television, makes sure to point out that he is not against the use of TV for entertainment. His main argument is that television, when used for other purposes such as news or education, is still geared towards entertainment at the expense of actual information, due to the constraints of the medium. For example, live television rewards rapid changes in content and visuals, making it difficult to have lengthy discussions involving context and prerequisite knowledge. News programs are a good example of this, where serious topics are discussed in 2-5 minute intervals, which is not enough time to give anything other than surface level information. They are also frequently interrupted by commercials, each on the order of 10-15 seconds long. Stories are further juxtaposed, placed in self-contained context-free segments, with one story jumping to another with no time given to think or talk about the last one. Talk shows are another example. These shows do not reward actual discussion because stopping to think or having an unclear stance does not play well on TV. Instead, everybody comes in with prewritten statements and delivers them one after another. They all have to get done in an hour at the most, because live TV can not have shows that go for much longer. People tuning in during the middle of a discussion will not be able to follow along and will change the channel. Something like a university lecture series on a topic such as physics, where each lecture is 1.5 hours long and requires watching all the previous lectures, would never be able to play on live TV.
These observations may seem dated these days due to the availability of streaming shows and the internet, but they're actually still very relevant. A lot of people get their news from TV or from sites like Reddit and Twitter, where information is even more compressed, surface-level, and context-free. In fact, actual newspapers are now struggling to sustain themselves, and are often resorting to sensationalized headlines to compete. They're getting pushed out by newer forms of communication. This is the problem that Postman points out. We have a society that thinks it is informed, but is merely entertained. The solution he gives, given the bounds of realism, is for people to understand the problem and to realize what kind of information they are absorbing when they hear it. I think this message is more relevant than ever these days, due to the current political situation, extremely heightened partisanship, multiple anti-science movements, and all kinds of outrage movements being formed over snippets of misinformation.