Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman)

In the classic Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman discusses how "forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms." He argues that a great shift has happened, looking at "the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television" and its ramifications. Claiming that "the medium is the metaphor," and "our metaphors create the content of our culture," he shows that the shift to a television-based culture "has had grave consequences public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute."

Summary

Technology transforms the way we think. "The form in which ideas are expressed affects what those ideas will be." Any new medium "changes the structure of discourse" and creates "new forms of truth-telling." The alphabet (and written word) changed the world. And typography (the printed word) dominated the landscape for over 400 years, from the invention of the printing press (mid-1400s) to the mid-1800s. It monopolized and shaped the discourse. We see this looking at "Typographic America," where print was "the model, the metaphor, and the measure of all discourse." Language (written and spoken) was the principle means of communication, and it molded us to think a certain way. It gave us a 'typographic mind.'

As Postman ponders the "Typographic Mind," he argues that "in a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangment of facts and ideas. The public for whom it is intended is generally competent to manage such discourse." "The printed page revealed the world, line by line, page by page, to be a serious, coherent place, capable of management of reason, and of improvement by logical and relevant criticism." But the Age of Exposition would soon be replaced by the Age of Show Business.

The invention and proliferation of the telegraph "gave a new meaning to public discourse." The "dazzle of distance and speed" ended up "introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence."  Quality and evaluation took a backseat, giving us "a world of broken time and broken attention." Soon after, photography made pictures the new focus and "forced exposition into the background." Together, telegraphy and photography created a language "that denied interconnectedness, proceeded without context, argued the irrelevance of history, explained nothing, and offered fascination in place of complexity and coherence." 

Decades later, "television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection. And it brought them into the home." He spends the rest of the book arguing "that television speaks in only one persistent voice- the voice of entertainment . . . in other words, [it] is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business." "What I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience." And he believes what television offers as a truth-telling medium is "dangerous and absurdist."

Why? Like any other medium, television "is a philosophy of rhetoric," and "on television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to say that television gives us a conversation in images, not words . . .[it therefore] demands a different kind of content from other media. You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content." For example, political debates on television today are "no discussion as we would normally use the word . . . [there are] no arguments or counterarguments, no scrutiny of assumptions, no explanations, no elaborations, no definitions." They have become a spectacle of sound bites and one-liners, "brought to heel by a medium that requires them to fashion performances rather than ideas." It's all about entertainment. Looks and celebrities matter more than propositions or facts. We can expect nothing other, for "what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, nonsubstantive, nohistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment." And, terrifyingly, "television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself."

What can we do about it? Not much, Postman admits, other than be aware. Understand that television shapes (and not merely reflects) culture. That "form will determine the nature of content." And remember that truth as we look beyond television, for "in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself." "There is nothing wrong with entertainment . . " the problems come when we live in the worlds created by it."

Review

This book was written in 1985, well before proliferation of Internet, smartphones, and the Information Age. And yet, as my friend says, "Postman was right." We have become absurd, silly, uninformed, and unconcerned. Our attention spans diminish as we're bombarded with information. We have no time to reflect or process. To form coherent arguments, appreciate subtlety, or tease out nuance. It's all about speed and spectacle. Amazing book. I should probably ponder it more, but there's this video of an octopus who does magic tricks that I need to check out.

Rating: A