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Rating:  -
Postman's book is a must read for anyone seriously considering the impact of television on our ability to think critically about our world. The essence of his argument is that we have migrated from a verbal/typographical mode of thinking to an image-based/show business mode of thinking, due largely to pervasivness of television in our lives.
If there were ever a context for reflecting on Postman's argument, it is certainly most glaring in the light of the just-ended presidential election. Thoughtful debate was entirely usuruped by sound bites and image-making.
The most chilling point Postman makes in this text is that Orwell's 1984 described a world in which books would be banned. Huxley's Brave New World described a world in which books were irrelevant, and that is the world in which we find oursleves at the turn of the 21st century! Because of the influcence of television, we no longer have the patience for linerar, logical and rational discourse.
My only reservation regardintg this text is that Postman should, perhaps, have given more attention to describing the underlying ephistomological assumptions about how humans perceive reality. He does not fully address the question of the extent to which we are "hard wired", or predisposed by our nature, to certain modes of thought and communication. Are we infinitely maleable by the media in which our communication occur, and if not, to what extent does our nature prescirbe limits to which changes in the mode of communication affect changes in our mode of thinking?
Rating: -
I remember when I was raising a hyperactive boy I chose getting cable over giving him pharmaceuticals because the sports channel was one of the few things that clamed him down (luckily he is not a TV baby, he actually reads now), while I was going to college. Unfortunately, I became caught up watching the Lifetime channel (I am an equalitarian and not a male basher). The only thing I learned from that insipid string of programs was the term "I don't want to talk about it". Now my son and I make fun of it because that saying appears to be an American icon, or at least one of the many brainwashings venomous techniques to keep people hooked on what's easy and lazy through television media.
The author of this book illustrates very well how television reduces us to mere idiots by exposing us to television shows that won't tax our brains or stimulate our minds by giving us pure trash escapism. Even the news programs have become that way, not only do we get half truths, but we get distorted versions of what large corporations that are funding these networks want us to think. For instance, before the holiday's one network said it was okay to be fat, after the holidays it's not okay to be fat. One day your cell phone causes cancer, the next the purple pill will kill you. What next? The networks exploit everyone, and most people either don't care or are in denial.
This book is about the rising American intellectual slow suicide by us allowing networks to provide cheap inaccurate entertainment. People don't read because they are too busy running home to watch the Sopranos or Six Feet Under. They are swallowed by all the commercial political propaganda, and then there are those commercials about direct TV. better, cable company packages, and prices, all to better aid to your slow intellectual suicide. This book is a must read.
Rating: -
Although this book was written in 1984, the ideas in it are still relevant to today's world, even moreso now than back then. This is one book that I wish he would update with new chapters, because a lot of the critiques he made when he wrote this have taken on new meaning in the events of just this new century alone. For instance, his main critique is how entertainment has infiltrated our culture with a focus on trivia rather than substance. No where is this more apparent than a state recalling a governor a year after he had won reelection by a significant number, and that such a governor was run out of office in favor of an ACTOR, who many hope the U.S. Constitution will be amended so he can seek even higher office! This, despite the number of conservatives who tell Hollywood actors to shut up about politics in the run up to the Iraq war. Politics used to be showbusiness for ugly people, but now its nothing more than an extension of showbusiness. Even televangelists are critiqued in Postman's book because of the lack of sacred boundaries that television does not have as compared to a place of worship.
When I read this book, I can see examples that have cropped up in the 1990s that have proven his thesis true. Cell phones is one example. Ever eavesdrop on another person's public cell phonecall? I'm shocked at the trivial minutaie that people discuss with whomever they are speaking to, as if what they are doing at that moment matters to another person. What we get in a society that always seeks amusement for fear of boredom is a constant barrage of images and distractions that don't really mean anything in the end. The way we teach our children in schools to study for the multiple guess tests instead of teaching them interconnected facts that build a story, a history, an appreciation for the interconnectedness of our planet. So, we end up with people who can pull facts out of their rears to succeed on gameshows like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?", where one question and answer doesn't relate to the next one. No wonder why people can't see a connection between our war in Iraq and our consumption of oil.
Postman is right...a society that seeks one entertaining thrill after another cannot survive and endure history's challenges for very long. When many people in the world haven't had their basic living needs met (food, water, shelter) while we are looking for the next entertaining thrill, what does that say about us? Why has amusement become such a huge, moneymaking value to our culture? When will we learn to balance entertainment with relevant issues that require serious study and attention? Why is our thirst for entertainment so unquenchable that now we're not satisfied with Hollywood's outpouring, but we expect entertainment from our politicians as well? These are questions that inevitably came up as I read this book. I really hope that Neil Postman will write a follow-up or update this book with minor changes (substituting references like "The A Team" and "Dallas" for "CSI" and "Desperate Housewives" for instance) and new chapters (like the phenomenon of Jesse Ventura and Schwartzenegger as governors; the use of cell phones for minutaie details; and the proliferation of reality television shows). But despite that, this is worth a serious read and discussion.
Rating: -
Neil Postman does a good job pointing out his ideas on the dangers of television and how it has changed our society and ways of life. He says it has degraded our culture, changing how we learn and educate ourselves and how we even practice religion. For example the news and politics. He explains that television shouldn't be a source for news because its only purpose is to bring us entertainment, I disagree because it seems to me that TV is one of the biggest sources we have to find out about the latest news, next to the news paper. There may be some programs whose purpose is merely entertainment (like the Jon Stewart Show) but there are also many programs whose goal is just to bring you the news. But one thing that I do agree with is how it has changed politics. It uses TV campaigning, which show the charisma and looks of the candidate, to lure in voters. It's no longer who has the better ideas, it's who has the more visual appealing campaign.
Postman's main idea in this book is how we have evolved our learning habits to television. We've come from learning from teachers through lectures which kept our brains active and made us ask questions about the subject, to reading which made us think about the material we're reading, to educational television programs which mostly make us brain dead and provide no education what so ever and purely entertainment. I do agree that most of television has no educational purpose and has dramatically influenced our learning ways that we now are hardly learning as much as people have in the past, but he has also missed those which do not fit into what he believes has no education or information. Now of days there are plenty of educational programs which do bring pure education along side with those that fit into of what he speaks of like The Jon Stewart Show and Barney.
Rating: -
The medium does not just alter the message but transforms the way we think. The alphabet rendered oral tradition obsolete and the printing press brought literacy to the masses. With the rise of the "Idiot Box" Postman sees the end of linear thinking. Politics, religion, and education are either entertainment or irrelevant. In 1985 Postman wrote this book with the thesis that Huxley was right and Orwell wrong.
Postman seems clearly annoyed with the fact that an actor was the POTUS and felt warnings should be played before political advertisements. Today we have candidates solemnly endorsing the message but it's clear the process has only accelerated since 1985. The wolves are circling and it's rational thinking which is the victims.
However, Postman didn't see the rise of the Internet. Most information is conveyed by the written word and if you avoid the "MSN: How you can tell if you Love your job" quizzes there is a wealth of "information." Postman realizes something is lost in the electronic transmission of information but he doesn't know quite what.
So what alternative does Postman offer to counter the harmful effects of mindless entertainment? He seems puzzled and doesn't think banning TV is realistic. Neither do I and I realize my love of prank phone calls fits right into his thesis. He feels TV is at its most dangerous when it pretends to educate and inform when major studies have found that people remember little from the nightly news. He thinks TV should be made as mind-numbingly stupid as possible and stop pretending images of wolves and babies can inform us about what's going on in the world. Leave television to entertainment.
I'd be curious to see if he still thinks the computer is a "toy" and what he thinks of the never ending streams of information from the Internet.
Otherwise I enjoyed reading this book and had fun writing about it on here. Everyone wants their voice heard. The Internet is replacing TV as the medium and that will change the way we think too.
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