Neil Postman

Examines the ways in which television has transformed public discourse--in politics, education, religion, science, and elsewhere--into a form of entertainment that undermines exposition, explanation and knowledge, in a special anniversary edition of the classic critique of the influence of the mass media on a democratic society. Reprint.

Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Amusing Ourselves to Death

B.A. Bacigal

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by 

's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: 

's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, 

 warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in 

's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

 feared were those who would ban books. What 

 feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. 

 feared those who would deprive us of information. 

 feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. 

feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 

 feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. 

feared we would become a captive culture. 

 feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As 

remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "

failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions

 added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, 

 feared that what we desire will ruin us.

Bastien Vaucher

Terence Moran, I believe, lands on the target in saying that with media whose structure is biased toward furnishing images and fragments, we are deprived of access to an historical perspective. In the absence of continuity and context, he says, "bits of information cannot be integrated into an intelligent and consistent whole." We do not refuse to remember; neither do we find it exactly useless to remember. Rather, we are being rendered unfit to remember. For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, it requires a contextual basis- a theory, a vision, a metaphor - something within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned. The politics of image and instantaneous news provides no such context, is, in fact, hampered by attempting to provide any.

(John Quinn was the Editor-in-Chief of USA Today)

In the age of television, the paragraph is becoming the basic unit of news in print media. Moreover, Mr. Quinn need not fret too long about being deprived of awards. As other newspapers join in the transformation, the time cannot be far off when awards will be given for the best investigative sentence.

This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not always suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less than one minute's time. In fact, it is quite obvious that TV news has no intention of suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore obstruct their attending to the next story that waits panting in the wings. In any case, viewers are not pro- vided with much opportunity to be distracted from the next story since in all likelihood it will consist of some film footage. Pictures have little difficulty in overwhelming words, and short-circuiting introspection.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Prescient, historically insightful, well argued, and even entertaining; and wrong on several counts with recurring flashes of angry white man energy.

Read for its influence on Infinite Jest and for attempting a speculative extrapolation or key theses to recommended systems-curated and generative content.

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Prescient, historically insightful, well argued, and even entertaining; and wrong on several counts with recurring flashes of angry white man energy.

Read for its influence on Infinite Jest and for attempting a speculative extrapolation or key theses to recommended systems-curated and generative content.

terrifyingly accurate to the current media landscape; especially to short-form content, filled with sentiments one would be surprised were written in 1985.

Sarah Schumacher

Julien Sobczak

The Age of Entertainment, and its intellectual consequences

This book was written in 1985, the year I was born, and unlike me, it hasn't aged.

The Age of the Internet has now superseded the Age of Television, and the Age of Typography increasingly seems to be a thing of the past. People want to be entertained. Every. Single. Moment. As a result, we live in a world of triviality as anticipated by the author where too few people still know how to think deeply. We are flooded by "information" that is not actionable, and we end up being misinformed as the continual flow of information denies us understanding.

As with any old book, you may be tempted to skip this book. The world is changing so fast. It's true. But the world is changing as depicted in the book. I really loved the reading to understand how we got there, especially the role of the telegraph and the news before the advent of the television. The book is well-argued. The author makes many good points that urge us to act. We have to prove the author wrong. I'm sure it would be the best gift we could give him.

Matthew Royal

DeedThesis in chapter 2 is silly

Historical review of the written word in chapter 3 is interesting. 

Discussion in chapter 4 of the "typographic" mind Is built on a sequence of "No true Scotsman"-style critical thinking errors and generalizing from exceptions. This chapter is destroying my trust in the author. He expresses the opinion that psychology and porosity all reasoning are opposed to each other.

Chapter 5 -- he makes up a lot of terms where perfectly good ones exist. E.g. Samuel Morse's " information grid. " it's a network, buddy; not a grid. No one calls it a grid. His arguments again decontexualized information does not support his thesis, as there has always been unactionable information. He complains that the world now lacks coherence and sense. This is a symptom of information overload. Perhaps the author is unable to cope with all the information availability and has lost his ability to support his worldview narrative. Redefined "myth" to mean "biases." Agree with him that people often accept what they see on TV without critical thought. However, I think that the so-called millennial generation is most critical of what they're shown on television and openly critique every aspect of it, including the medium's idioms and tropes.

Part 3.
Disagree completely with his statement that technology has an inherent bias. Particularly because right before he said that, he explained very carefully that the bias came from the social "medium" the technology creates, not the technology itself. 

I don't disagree with him completely. His reasoning is seriously flawed and is coupled with a cocky attitude. In ending the book here on page 84 out of 163, and declaring this book a "recyclable good." (I intentionally left it in the seatback pocket of an airplane.)

Andrew Louis

No patience for "everything was better in the glory days"

Keven Wang

I get the point. But it is not that engaging for me

Niel Postman describes how the fragmented and entertaining form imposed by the television medium has affected all other other social aspects of our lives.

This book is even more relevant than ever in the age of social media, where information travels at the speed of light and is even more fragmented. News items have been reduced to a few characters, or a single image in a thread of unconnected stories that each get a second of attention. Worse yet those stories are now targeted to single individual. I wish there was an updated version of the book that included this new medium. Fortunately for Niel Postman he didn’t live to experience this brave new world.

“The medium is the message”

Niel Postman describes how the fragmented and entertaining form imposed by the television medium has affected all other other social aspects of our lives.

This book is even more relevant than ever in the age of social media, where information travels at the speed of light and is even more fragmented. News items have been reduced to a few characters, or a single image in a thread of unconnected stories that each get a second of attention. Worse yet those stories are now targeted to single individual. I wish there was an updated version of the book that included this new medium. Fortunately for Niel Postman he didn’t live to experience this brave new world.

Examines the ways in which television has transformed public discourse--in politics, education, religion, science, and elsewhere--into a form of entertainment that undermines exposition, explanation and knowledge

Nelson Zagalo

"Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" is a 1985 book, considered a classic of media studies, having served to elevate Neil Postman to the level of McLuhan, both visionaries and media prophets. On that side, I tend to agree, the approach is close, although Postman is more organised and regimented, both tend towards writing that is more of an epic and less of an academic. But if the ability to create good metaphors is important, because it helps a greater number of people to understand the complex, it is not a sufficient condition for analysis and knowledge creation. So it is not surprising that the greatest legacies of both are the titles of their books.

Texto completo, em Português, no blog: 
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

Brave New World

Todd Luallen

An excellent read that addresses our culture's "need" for entertainment at the expense of just about everything else. Postman does a great job of comparing Orwell and Huxley, and showcases why one was right and the other was wrong (regarding American culture). It was a bit odd to be listening to an audiobook version of a book that describes the dangers of non-printed forms of learning. The most interesting point for me was the discussion about the early American society and how literate and well-read the population was. 

This book was originally written in 1984, but it has been updated a bit. However, I think a book like this could be written now with much more current statistics and examples.

Rick Dobrowolski

Neil Postman writes a thought-provoking book with the timeless principle that we must evaluate how forms of media affect us and our ability to think. This is an old book dealing with the advent of television in every American household yet the discussion applies whatever form of media you are engaging. He is spot on with so many of his observations.

We as a culture have endless opportunities to amuse our brains right our of our heads, and way too many in our culture soak up as many cat videos and Netflix binges as they can. The enemy of our progress isn’t a tyrannical dictator, but the alluring entertainer.

Rjyan C Kidwell

Whoa. 1985 criticism of television's effect on The Discourse is eerie af in the wake of social media. Eerie is actually maybe not nearly strong enough a word. You can read this book quite quickly, and you should, if you look at your phone every day.

Simon Elliott Stegall

This one is a reread. The first time I read it it blew my mind, and though I've since become more acquainted with writers like Postman, I still think it is a great book. I think everyone past 9th grade should read Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Ivaylo Durmonski

Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman is a twenty-first century book published in the twentieth century. The message the author wanted to convey is more true today than it was nearly 40 years ago – when the book hit the shelves.

Entertainment, not desire for knowledge, move the world now. This new dogma forces people who produce content for the television screen and online nowadays, to adapt their message to the media, not the media to the message. Put simply, we’re stripping away the context and making everything look attractive because that’s what people want. This is what sells now.

Unfortunately, this ongoing desire to make things simple and fun has devastating effects on society. The removal of the thinking barrier is making people less and less willing to exercise their thinking abilities. Moreover, since everything is trying to entertain us, we start to believe that we should be amused all the time and nothing else should be considered important. Efforts should not be wasted unless we are extremely delighted in the end.

In great detail, Neil Postman explains how communication changed throughout the years and how we are now deceived by endless forms of entertainment. We are made to believe that we should be happy without any effort. That’s what modern media promotes.

And if you think that this book is outdated, just add social media in the text every time TV is mentioned. The only outdated thing is the prediction the author made about the consequences of watching television. Things are far worse than what Neil Postman described in the book when he first wrote it.

When you watch a show, when you play a game, you imagine that everything should be as easy as doing these things. No brain activity should be used to exist sort to speak. After all, you can enter a prolific state of laughter with just a push of a button, why bother doing something extra? That’s how modern media negatively influences our lives. That’s what the author wanted to warn us about 40 years ago.

The key takeaway:

TV removed all borders in the world but it also did something else – turned society into a trivial culture, preoccupied with irrelevant to our existence stories. By stripping away all the context, and presenting everything in an amusing way, TV discourages us from thinking about, well, everything. We start to live in a world where things are supposed to be fun and laughter should be the default state of our existence.

Full review: 
https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...

John Balek

For a book written in 1985, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" has a lot that is still relevant to today's society, if not more. The first half of the book goes over the history of different technologies advancing mediums in America. This was fascinating in itself because learning about things like the printing press and the telegraph and how they changed how American's learned and communicated.

The second part of the book is where Postman really goes into his unraveling of how television, and entertainment in general, has changed how society. The influence of entertainment on education, religion, and politics has shown to devalue its importance. Postman truly shows how the medium influences the message and how most people do not consider this variable when consuming information.

While this book can feel very of its time at parts, it is easy to apply it's general messages to those of our modern lives. Our current politics, news cycle, and communication through the internet has only proven Postman's point further. 

Postman is quite pretentious in his methods but often his points are more true than false. He is also a great writer, which makes this book entertaining and engaging in itself. It also doesn't hurt that he has a similar appreciating for Aldous Huxley as I do.

Luca Conti

Even if it was visionary 30 years ago it doesn't mean it's still relevant. It isn't.

What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? As our world begins to look more and more like Orwell's 1984, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever. "It's unlikely that Trump has ever read Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his ascent would not have surprised Postman.” -CNN Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals. “A brilliant, powerful, and important book. This is an indictment that Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one.” –Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

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