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Rating:  -
This book outlines how American culture has declined from reasonable discourse to trite, shallow and (largely uninformed) opinion-based mindlessness as a direct result of the technology we use to communicate. Written decades before the proliferation of the internet, mobile phones and instant messaging, there now can be little doubt of the validity of Neil Postman's conclusions. Sound bites, extremist talk radio, political spin and reality TV have further degraded our civility and tastes over the last 20 years. Even amongst the literate, the many uncivil and ill-conceived comments posted to Amazon support his premise.
Unfortunately, the author's proposed solutions are weak. Further, his academic and formal writing style makes for dry reading. Perhaps that was an intentionally ironic decision to be contrary to the show-business culture we have become. Thankfully, the text is sprinkled with some wry humor from time to time.
Read this book if you are interested in a prescient insight on how so many Americans have become so amazingly uninformed in the information age. And let's hope enough of us keep reading books -- and encouraging others to do so - to avoid becoming the Brave New World imagined by Huxley.
Rating:  -
Postman's book sets out to educate North America about how television is affecting its culture. Sadly, North America hasn't gotten the message because the message is in a book. That's the basic crux of the book.
There are no pulled punches or hidden agendas in Postman's book. The problem is obvious, North Americans used to read books for hours on end. They were able to listen to hour long speeches. They were able to make clear rhetorical arguments. Now, after the advent of television, we have become a nation that needs "No Child Left Behind" and countless other educational programs that do little to produce the academics that we want to produce.
Postman's book was written in 1985. This just at the advent of the internet. I think that this timing is important. I think the advent of the internet may have changed some of the qualities of what the book has to say - but the basic value of the book is still there.
What you will still find VERY relevant is Postman's discussions on how media has changed the educational and cultural landscape of North America. You will also find it very easy to read. I was able to get through it in only a couple of days at about an hour per day...and that's coming from someone infected by the television bug.
As a Christian and a seminarian, I found this book a useful tool to understand the culture that I was living in. I'm not sure if Postman is a Christian or not, but if he isn't - he plays one well on TV. He brings up how Jesus' message interacts with people throughout the ages and how the medium of Jesus' message affects the metaphors in which we understand it. In short, Jesus knows communication theory (most likely because He created it).
I do hope you'll pick up Postman's book. If for no other reason, it will be worth it for the pat on the back that you'll feel Postman giving you for being that rare North American creature, the book reader. Enjoy!
Rating:  -
They say, "you are what you eat." Neil Postman takes this to it's next logical step. "You are what you experience."
Mr. Postman focuses on two inventions, the telegraph, and the photograph. One allowed news from across the globe to fill our brains with so much junk information, that trivia games had to be invented to make use of it. The other allowed the world to be presented in a disjoint way, such that an image of a tree you walk by everyday, can be taken in such a way that, while you're assured it's real, you do not recognize it.
Television, according to Mr. Postman, is the child of these two inventions.
By taking us back in time 150 years, this book looks at famous speeches to examine the capability of the minds of both the speakers, and the listeners. Once these speeches are analyzed, the author barely has to give examples of present-day speech to make his point. It is obvious to anyone who has listened to any recent presidential debate, that this level of dialogue and logic does not exist anymore.
The brain is an incredible, organic machine. But it is only programmed in one way. That is through experience. So if all it is presented with is 30-second sound bites, and paragraph, or even sentence-length logic, then that is how it will "wire" itself.
The next time you hear that students are not being taught history, you may want to consider if they are even capable of retaining it. Appropriately, Neil Postman invites serious consideration of Huxley's 'A Brave New World', with it's more willing inhabitants, as the more likely dystopian future, rather than Orwell's '1984'.
It is a rare book that encourages and gives readers the capability to step outside of our own minds to examine the forces that "wired" it, and continue to do so. I will move on from this book to read some McLuhan, and Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. My hope is that I can help teach my children to avoid, or at the very least recognize, the trap that may be inherent in this technology.
Rating: -
A very well-written and scary book about how television's strength (entertainment) has corrupted news content and political discourse. Starts where Orwell, Huxley, and McLuhan left off.
In spite of the serious subject, many funny parts.
Neil Postman is a prolific author and social commentator of the end of the 20th century. Over 20 books written on media, technology, and education.
Rating: -
A careless reading of "Amusing Ourselves to Death" will reveal a string of cliches about the modern era of industry and sense of participation in it: that our politicians are image-focused, "news-of-the-day" is typically useless, and our preachers and teachers are entertainers primarily. This book is hack, if only in the sense that the ideas he presents were of grave concern to Plato. Postman takes that (1) truth is given form by rhetoric, (2) which is defined by the mode of expression, (3) and although historically authors were aware of the distinction between speech, image and text, with the rapid accumulation of new forms of meda we are no longer conscious of how they shape our dialogue, (4) and via the transformation of discourse into image-driven entertainment we are losing the context of content.
If any of this sounds familiar, it is for the same reason that Shakespeare is full of quotes. His ideas have such weight that they have successfully defined the scope of media studies. But perhaps the most insidious nature of television and the Entertainment Age is its ability to package criticism of it into entertainment itself. VH1's extraordinary "I Love the 70's" took B-celebrities commenting on those who have become B-celebrities and the outlandishness extremes of entertainment. To take Postman seriously, it's to understand media studies is not merely studying what's on television, but what is television for.
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