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 … Read more
Chapter 9: Reach out to elect someone By bringing together in compact form all of the arts of show business—music, drama, imagery, humor, celebrity—the television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand Postman’s point here, it is useful to remember that capitalism, like science … Read more
Chapter 7: Now… This I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in … Read more
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.” … Read more
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. Information is important … Read more
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.” But these people did not just read the Bible or religious books, they read many nonreligious books. … Read more
Chapter 2: The Media as Epistemology In this chapter, The Media as Epistemology, 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 … Read more
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 … Read more
“You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. … Read more
My Left Foot is a movie based on a true story and was recommended by Jordan Peterson. Christy Brown was an Irish writer with cerebral palsy, he was expertly played by Daniel Day Lewis in an award-winning performance. His life was tough, he had no control of any of his limbs, except for his left … Read more