Neil Postman has written a book very similar to the other books we're reading in this course. Postman also even references McLuhan, including that McLuhan was Postman's english teacher 30 years prior to "Amusing Ourselves to Death." This book discusses the fact, (Like Brave New World, only in a more "realistic, in the present" sort of view) how we've come to an age of being unintelligent. We are so accustomed to the age of television now, that “we are people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (Postman 4). He discusses how during the printing press era, America was more a more intelligent discourse community. We relied more on intellect and using our minds to live life rather than being subjected to a television screen. Since the boom of television, the American mind has been warped and molded into the shape that the media controls, thus we've become dumber as a nation. He claims that the reason television is making us less intelligent is because "Television gives us a conversation in images, not words" (Postman 7). Basically, Postman is saying that we're not having to learn anything watching television, we're just being entertained and becoming mindless blobs in front of a screen. It is true; television is a major advancement in technology leading to more and more kids putting down books and picking up XBOX controllers. Postman also discusses americans in the media saying, "Indeed, in America, God favors all those who possess both a talent and a format to amuse, whether they be preachers, athletes, entrepreneurs, politicians, teachers or journalists" (Postman 5). He means here that the only people on television are good looking behind camera, and entertaining. Whereas the people who aren't fortunate enough to have camera skills are the ones who sit at home, being amused by those on TV.
In terms of media surveillance, this book so far has made me think of the medium of video games as a whole. Looking deeper into video games, take World of Warcraft for instance, WoW is one of the most successful online video games, with 11.5 million monthly subscriptions. Now, if there's another medium out there more addictive than WoW, please share. Imagine the amount of kids every day, who get home from school, and the first thing they do is log onto their WoW accounts. No longer do kids come home and take out a book for some easy reading; instead, kids subject themselves to sitting in front of a screen for hours upon hours everyday. Postman is one hundred percent accurate in claiming that our society is becoming dumber. We're no longer learning on our own, but instead being programmed by all forms of media every time we're at home. Is there a solution? Who knows, but hopefully some benefit will come from the constant attack of media soon.
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Well, I think it might be a little rosy to imagine that kids in earlier generations came home to a good book. That would be media, of course, as well, and so only the tool would have changed between the book and the xbox or the WoW. It was much more likely that kids would come home, drop the books, and go outside for a rousing game of street football followed by hiking punctuated by rolling some boulders down the sides of canyons. Anyway, speaking for myself.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that Postman taps McLuhan as his teacher. You probably should note in the same or some subsequent sentence that Postman thinks McLuhan dead wrong. They argue opposing sides of the typographic paradigm. It's the loss of the typographic mind that makes Postman say we're dumbing down. It's that we think by pictures and images (delivered electronically of course, and that's where McLuhan cheerleads) . That's what means that we're amusing ourselves to death. It's the death of discou rse, the death of propositional truths which are always measured by reference to reality. Pictures, on the other hand, are a different brand of reality and so the propositional measure is not possible with them.
Gordon