Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Citation: Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. USA: Penguin, 1985. Print.

Summary:

In his foreword, Postman compellingly applies two opposing viewpoints of two authors—George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, who have both written about future dystopias—to our current relationship and future interactions with technology, especially the technology we use as a means of mass communication. He states, “Orwell [in 1984] feared that the truth will be concealed from us. Huxley [in A Brave New World] feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance…In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us,” (vi-viii). Although I have never read A Brave New World (I’ve read 1984), I find this idea of being ruined by what we adore to be much more frightening, for it is a destruction that could seemingly happen to us in ways that are subtle, submissive, and unintentional. Postman suggests the prophecies of Huxely as correct, and applies these prophesies to our submissive and complacent interactions with technologies like television, and how these interactions have altered our behavior in negative—but reparable—ways. 

He also references Marshall McLuhan’s claim, that the medium is the massage, but instead suggests that the medium is the metaphor:  “Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility…Whether we are experiencing our world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it…” (10)…in other words, everything we now seem to experience has gone through some sort of alteration, some sort of filtration: an idea, filtered through the medium, re-presented to you (the viewer).

Response: 

So far as our module on media goes, I think I agree with this text the most out of the 3 texts we have read this week ( including The Medium is the Massage and Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television). There are certain elements that all 3 texts  agree upon, mainly that  the technology we employ as means for mass communication has the capability to greatly affect all aspects of our lives, including how we understand and interpret reality. This influence can be viewed as something with the potential to be opportunistic (McLuhan) or as something inherently catastrophic (Mander). The reason I appreciated Postman’s text is that he presented a problem—the complacency, numbness, and passivity that result from the overabundance of entertainment and pleasures we partake in—but more importantly a solution, particularly in how to deal with and overcome such an influential medium such as television. Eliminating the television—Mander’s solution—is not the answer, and I agree with this. Instead, Postman pitches a need for an education in media consciousness, to understand the technologies that “undo [our] capacities to think” (vii). He states, “The problem…does not reside in what people watch. The problem is in that we watch. The solution must be found in how we watch…For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are,” (160-1). I see his offering of a solution as practical, and obviously more optimistic and realistic than Mander’s viewpoints. Hopefully this education in media consciousness is something that comes into fruition soon, especially considering the increasingly digital age we are living in; it’s something I’m glad to be considering in a class such as ours, but no doubt this education has to happen earlier and to a greater extent for the generations to come, who will be interacting with technology more than any generation has before.

I’m not sure if I completely understand what Postman means by the medium being a metaphor exactly, but I believe he is saying that when something is altered and re-presented through some artificial medium, it is not truly representative of reality but rather presents us with a likeness of reality, a likeness that needs to be re-observed, questioned, and never taken only at face value.