Amusing Ourselves to Death. Public discourse in the age of show business. Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death. Public discourse in the age of show business. Neil Postman. 1985. ISBN 0140094385. This book is over 30 years old – yet it reads as if it was talking about the US today. Ronald Reagan said politics is like show business. Postman says it now is show business. Mcluhan said the medium ( television) is the message -Postman says that television has redefined all messages. The erosion of literacy, interest in history, journalism and intelligent discourse has been accelerated by the transformation of messages into entertaining small sound bytes. He exposes the various lacks of TV to do anything but serving the seeing public – not the learning public. ( To be fair he traces the erosion of learning back to the telegraph which created a flow of news from many other locations, news that to most of us we could not do any action in response to it, just absorb it) , He also draws much out of Huxley’s Brave New World – where learning is dulled by the pursuit of activities and entertainment so that the population is uninterested in anything but being entertained with holidays on soma. ( Huxley in Brave New World revisited speaks to the acceleration of this.
For any leader, educator or intelligent thinker this book is important to read.
Category: History, Lifeskills
-
Reg Nordman is a founder and Managing Partner for Rocket Builders. - @@post_notification_header
- A Brief History
- Contact Me
- Customer Testimonials
- Google Reader Notes
- In the News
- Search Me and More
- Ready to Rocket 25
-
Feed on