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A review by gpettey19
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
Hard to rate. Important commentary with a timeless message, but also undoubtedly pretentious at times. He's surely rolling over in his grave now that television has been far surpassed by the damage social media has done to our public discourse.
Picked up after listening to Ezra Klein's The Mid-Century Media Theorists Who Saw What Was Coming episode.
Main argument: The medium is the message. How we think, talk, and write is shaped by the medium in which we're expected to communicate information. According to Postman, TV undermined American public discourse because it demanded entertainment above rhetoric, debate, and/or dialogue.
It was interesting to apply this argument to contemporary media, like the reaction buttons, which distill our communication into a simple images of love, laugh, like, or dislike—doesn't leave room for much nuance, explanation, or critical thought.
(Can't help but feel like we're all doomed.)
Picked up after listening to Ezra Klein's The Mid-Century Media Theorists Who Saw What Was Coming episode.
Main argument: The medium is the message. How we think, talk, and write is shaped by the medium in which we're expected to communicate information. According to Postman, TV undermined American public discourse because it demanded entertainment above rhetoric, debate, and/or dialogue.
It was interesting to apply this argument to contemporary media, like the reaction buttons, which distill our communication into a simple images of love, laugh, like, or dislike—doesn't leave room for much nuance, explanation, or critical thought.
(Can't help but feel like we're all doomed.)