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A review by mbwojci
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Prophetic.
In his conclusion, Postman states (in 1985!!):
“…I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology. I mention it here because, clearly, Americans have accorded it in their customary mindless inattention; which means they will use it as they are told, without a whimper… until, years from now, when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data have been of great value to large-scale organizations but have solved very little of importance to most people and have created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved.” (p. 161)
Postman’s perspective as a communication scholar is asking serious questions around the benefits both of what and how things are communicated by TV (and by extension, social media), and the impacts to how we as people communicate with each other.
He builds upon Marshall McLuhan’s popular aphorism, “The medium is the message’, proposing “The medium is the metaphor”. This idea expressly connects the idea that we cannot underestimate the impact of the mediums we use to communicate ultimately influence how we as a culture both absorb information and/or accept that information.
There’s a lot of helpfully-framed questions in here related to TV / the ‘information age’ and prospective negative outcomes related to economics, politics, religion, social issues, human development, and more. Written in 1985, it is a bit shocking of how more applicable his ideas are today.
I think it’s popular to say ‘everybody should read X book’ today… but seriously. For people who are actively using online media (all of us?), this book is so important to engage with serious questions that are neglected around potential impacts to our lives.
In his conclusion, Postman states (in 1985!!):
“…I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology. I mention it here because, clearly, Americans have accorded it in their customary mindless inattention; which means they will use it as they are told, without a whimper… until, years from now, when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data have been of great value to large-scale organizations but have solved very little of importance to most people and have created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved.” (p. 161)
Postman’s perspective as a communication scholar is asking serious questions around the benefits both of what and how things are communicated by TV (and by extension, social media), and the impacts to how we as people communicate with each other.
He builds upon Marshall McLuhan’s popular aphorism, “The medium is the message’, proposing “The medium is the metaphor”. This idea expressly connects the idea that we cannot underestimate the impact of the mediums we use to communicate ultimately influence how we as a culture both absorb information and/or accept that information.
There’s a lot of helpfully-framed questions in here related to TV / the ‘information age’ and prospective negative outcomes related to economics, politics, religion, social issues, human development, and more. Written in 1985, it is a bit shocking of how more applicable his ideas are today.
I think it’s popular to say ‘everybody should read X book’ today… but seriously. For people who are actively using online media (all of us?), this book is so important to engage with serious questions that are neglected around potential impacts to our lives.