4 ms·

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Sakos 4y ago
> The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasizes the quality of information in favor of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate. The argument isn't wrong, but it is outdated. We've figured out that we can dilute and commoditize text as well as we can visual media (see Twitter). The core idea ("people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights") is still valid, but the rest of it seems to incorrectly pit textual against visual media and it lacks nuance and sufficient depth. It's more of an ideological argument, which I find less than useful.
- _aavaa_ 4y ago
  >> rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television > the rest of it seems to incorrectly pit textual against visual media and it lacks nuance and sufficient depth. I don't think that's quiet right. He's not pitting textual media against visual media, he's pitting the written book against broadcast television. Also the argument isn't outdated, your comment about twitter further emphasises it. Text needed to be put on twitter, rather then in books or even websites, to get to the point where you would (rightly) consider it diluted and commoditized. Twitter's form excludes the possibility of writers regularly publishing whole books on there just as much as written books excluded the kind of "few people understand: ", "this is important 1/n" threads that you see on twitter.
JakeAl 4y ago
Excellent book and a must read. It's all about narrative control and how everuthuing is a narrative (because our nervous systems have evolved around storytelling as a framework for communication) in an age when we know companies like Google and Twitter buried information from being found in real time for political reasons. We don't need to get our news and info from a faucet anymore. Also, people often attribute "politics is downstream from culture" to Andrew Breitbart, but it was Neil Postman who said "culture is downstream from media/technology," a far greater point in the face of the aforementioned Google and Twitter examples.

> The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content", that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and "news of the day" becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasizes the quality of information in favor of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate. The argument isn't wrong, but it is outdated. We've figured out that we can dilute and commoditize text as well as we can visual media (see Twitter). The core idea ("people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights") is still valid, but the rest of it seems to incorrectly pit textual against visual media and it lacks nuance and sufficient depth. It's more of an ideological argument, which I find less than useful.

_aavaa_ 4y ago
>> rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television > the rest of it seems to incorrectly pit textual against visual media and it lacks nuance and sufficient depth. I don't think that's quiet right. He's not pitting textual media against visual media, he's pitting the written book against broadcast television. Also the argument isn't outdated, your comment about twitter further emphasises it. Text needed to be put on twitter, rather then in books or even websites, to get to the point where you would (rightly) consider it diluted and commoditized. Twitter's form excludes the possibility of writers regularly publishing whole books on there just as much as written books excluded the kind of "few people understand: ", "this is important 1/n" threads that you see on twitter.

JakeAl 4y ago

Excellent book and a must read. It's all about narrative control and how everuthuing is a narrative (because our nervous systems have evolved around storytelling as a framework for communication) in an age when we know companies like Google and Twitter buried information from being found in real time for political reasons. We don't need to get our news and info from a faucet anymore. Also, people often attribute "politics is downstream from culture" to Andrew Breitbart, but it was Neil Postman who said "culture is downstream from media/technology," a far greater point in the face of the aforementioned Google and Twitter examples.