Table of Contents
In 1985, Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The book is a criticism of television and its effect on society. Postman argues that TV has dumbed down public discourse, making it more entertainment-focused and less informative.
Postman criticizes the effects of television on society and culture. He argues that television has had a detrimental effect on the quality of political discourse in the United States. Postman contends that politicians now focus more on creating “sound bites” that will be picked up by the news media rather than engaging in thoughtful discussion of complex issues. As a result, Americans have become more concerned with entertainment than with information.
Postman’s argument is based on the idea that television has formatted our ideas and thoughts to be easily digestible soundbites and bite-sized pieces of information. This is in contrast to the Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, which was carefully crafted and delivered over the course of several minutes. speeches like King’s are no longer common because they cannot compete with the noise and spectacle of televangelists, infomercials, reality TV, and 24-hour news cycles.
In addition, Postman argues that television has changed the way we think about knowledge. In pre-television days, people would go to libraries or attend lectures to learn about the world. Now, we rely on TV news programs or Google searches to give us quick answers to complex questions. This has led to a situation where we value information that can be consumed quickly, rather than information that is deep or meaningful.
Postman’s book is a well-argued criticism of television and its effects on society. While some might argue that television can be used for educational purposes, Postman convincingly shows how its design and format have changed the way we think about knowledge and discourse. If you’re interested in media studies or the history of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death is definitely worth a read.
Below are links to detailed chapter summaries.
Chapter 1: The Medium is the Message
The more we use symbols, the more our physical reality diminishes.
Instead of dealing with things directly, man has entered into a state of constant conversation with himself. He is so enveloped in linguistic forms, artistic images, and mythical symbols that he cannot see or know anything without the interposition of an artificial medium.
Chapter 2: The Media as Epistemology
In this chapter, Postman explain the role of media as a means of understanding the world. He first reminds us that proverbs and sayings were not just occasional devices in oral cultures, as Walter Ong points out, “They are incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.”
Chapter 3: Typographic America
The Bible was the central reading matter in all households – Protestants shared Luther’s belief that printing was “God’s highest and extremest act of Grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.”
Chapter 4: The Peekaboo World
Newspapers came to depend not on the quality or usefulness of their news, but on how much and at what speed they provided it. James Bennett of the New York Herald boasted that his paper contained 79,000 words of telegraphic content in the first week of 1848.
Chapter 5: The Age of Show Business
The supra-ideology for all television conversation is entertainment. No matter what is depicted, the main presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure. When news shows provide us with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the news anchors to “join them tomorrow.”
Chapter 7: Now… This
Robert MacNeil, the executive editor and co-anchor of he “MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour”, writes that the idea is “to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required … to pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds at a time.”
Chapter 9: Reach out to elect someone
To understand Postman’s point here, it is useful to remember that capitalism, like science and democracy, came from the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists believed that both buyers and sellers were mature enough, well informed and reasonable to conduct transactions that were mutually beneficial. If greed fuelled the capitalistic engine, rationality was the driver.
Chapter 10: Teaching as an amusing activity
Reading books and watching television differ completely in what they imply about learning. America is a case in point of what can be thought of as the third great crisis in Western education. The first was in fifth century B.C, when Athens transformed from an oral culture to an alphabet-writing culture.
Chapter 11: The Huxleyan Warning
Orwell was not the first to tell us about the dangers of tyranny to the spirit, but what is remarkable about his work is that it makes no difference if our wardens are inspired by left or right-wing ideologies.