Neil Postman's AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

Three specific characteristics of the "Typographic Mind.”

Planned out and structured: Print allowed people to think about what they wanted to say. There was time to do research, reference outside materials, and think about how to structure what was being said.

Serious: Typography called upon the mind to work harder than before. More information had to be processed, which caused people to step back from their words. This made both writing and the spoken language more serious and impersonal.

Analytical: Readers and writers with a typographic mind had to analyze what they were reading and writing. Some of the things being analyzed were whether or not the content being read was the truth. Since information could be gathered from multiple sources people where able to form their own opinion.

Postman suggests that the twin inventions of 19th century Telegraphy and Photography challenged Typography's monopoly on public discourse. How, specifically did each of these two new media/communications inventions do this?

Telegraphy: Broke down communication barriers and unified American discourse. To gain information you no longer had to wait for printed material to arrive. It also was a turning point where we started receiving useless information from around the U.S. This information didn’t affect our everyday lives, but yet entertained us. People where so excited by the telegraph sending news to places that never would have received that information otherwise.

Photography: With photos came the idea of “seeing is believing”. Photos where concrete representation of a time and place. Like the first pictures of a man walking on the moon solidified that it happened. Photos challenged typography’s monopoly on public discourse by changing what the public remembered about people, and needing photo to show or understand truth. An example in the book was Albert Einstein. Before photography people would have remembered Albert Einstein by his words and theories, with the photo people tended to remember his photo, what he looked like.






What does Postman mean by "The Peek-A-Boo World," and can you give an example of this world from your own media experiences?

When Postman describes “The Peek-A-Boo World” he is talking about the amount of information popping in and out of our lives. It could be through television or any other media. This information has little to no affect on our everyday activities.

Today we are bombarded with useless information. The top supplier that I can think of is celebrity news. Even when you are looking through respected news papers you can find out which celebrity couples are breaking up, and where Brad and Angelina went for the weekend. Entertainment news has become a very large part my “Peek-A-Boo World”. Here is a video of a entertainment news program called The Soup:




Discuss THREE specific ways in which Postman explains how the medium of television transforms the epistemological nature of each of the following:

A. Public discourse about religion
• With the transfer of religion to television Postman describes how authenticity is lost in the process. People used to go to churches or synagogues now they participate in religion through a television set in the living room, bedroom, or kitchen. They watch a religious reading being read on the same screen as they do their soap operas.
• Religion on T.V. became a form of entertainment instead of enlightenment. Preachers alter their content to maximize their ratings. They tailor their shows to get the widest range of people to watch them.
• It became less about what was being preached and more about who was preaching it and in what fashion where they doing it in. Postman writes, “Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concreteness and persistence of the image of the preacher carries the clear message that it is he, not He, who must be worshipped”.
Here is a video of an SNL skit that makes fun of religious figures that became famous through religious television as an entertainment:


B. Public discourse about politics
• The television allowed the public to see what the political candidate looked like while they talked about their stances. Voting and public option became more about what the candidate looked like rather than the candidate’s plans and knowledge.
• Politics used television to communicate to the public. To get viewers to watch politics became a form of entertainment. Postman writes, “If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are”.
• Political candidates choose to advertise on television through the form of commercials. This gave the public the impression that all problems could be easily fixed since they could get all the information they needed in the 30 second ad. They no longer had a need or want to listen to long speeches or written literature with details and explanations.
C. Public discourse about education
• Creating a different curriculum for how knowledge is acquired. Postman explains that even with educational programs they teach the viewer how to gain knowledge through television and not promote knowledge in the classroom.
• Television has made the school systems adapt to them instead of the school system figuring out how to make television work for them. Changing what is learned so that it goes along with what is entertaining on television.
• The television started a swing of teachers educating through drama. Like the television, drama got a good response. With time passing students were expecting learning to be entertaining and wouldn’t accept it otherwise.

What specific solutions does Postman offer to improve public communication in our "Peek A Boo" world, and our challenges to communicate in a thoughtful and rational manner in "An Age of Show Business"? In other words, how might we prevent a world in which we are "amusing ourselves to death"?

The first solution Postman suggest is “to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed”. Postman also suggests using schools and education to gain knowledge about how we receive our media. Understand that all media is being presented to us in the form on entertainment, and with that your sense of what truth is changes.


HARD Question: Does Postman's thesis about television still apply to our public discourse in today's Age of the Internet? Please explain your reasoning in 4-5 sentences.

Yes, I do believe that Postman’s thesis about television still applies to our public discourse in today’s Age of the Internet. Although, we have opened a world where we are able to search and seek out information, the way that information is presented to us is still in the form of entertainment for the most part. Internet has allowed us to find more sources but that doesn’t mean that they are credible. For example some see wikipedia as a search engine that delivers the truth instead of seeking out a more credible source.