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> I'm not saying he's entirely wrong, but a lot of what he's saying sounds very much like how TV was once described. Calling attention to Neil Postman’s __Amus
by noblethrasher 9y ago
> I'm not saying he's entirely wrong, but a lot of what he's saying sounds very much like how TV was once described.
Calling attention to Neil Postman’s __Amusing Ourselves to Death__ is the usual rejoinder to a statement like this. But, Daniel J. Boorstin’s __The Image__[1][2], published in 1962, just about perfectly presages the outcomes of 2016 – 2017 vis-à-vis social media; I cannot commend it enough.
(N.B television (especially with news shows) is also both a form of, and antecedent to what we call social media.)
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Image-Guide-Pseudo-Events-America/dp/0679741801 https://www.amazon.com/Image-Guide-Pseudo-Events-America/dp/...
[2] http://www.transparencynow.com/boor.htm http://www.transparencynow.com/boor.htm, (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about this site, having just discovered it a few seconds ago, but it provides a nice summary of the book).
- ableal 9y agoThanks, nice reference. The Wikipedia page has an amusing phrase: The Image is also well-known for defining a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-events_in_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Image:_A_Guide_to_Pseudo-e...
- lastflowers 9y agoThanks for the link.