Amusing Ourselves to Death
written by Neil Postman
This book has been floating around me for years, and at last I have decided to reel it in. Amusing Ourselves to Death is unlike most books I've read before, for it is not a fiction nor nonfiction story but a critical piece of cultural analysis, complete with footnotes referencing extensive research. I've tried starting this book many times in the past, never making past the first chapter, but at last I have reached a stage in my life where I can heed this message and have it bring me a strange level of comfort in understanding the influences of media.
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman begins his argument by using the books 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley to illustrate two different fears/warning these authors had for the future. Orwell feared a world that was regulated by a "big brother" and restricted all knowledge in order to control the populous. Huxley conjured a world in which no knowledge if off limits, and the excess of information would cause people to no longer discern or care which information was useful and important, that they would drown in the sea of amusement instead. And a Brave New World-future is exactly what Postman believes we are heading for, if not already at. Information is more available than ever, and when this book was first published, the biggest spreader of information, both pertinent and not, was television.
Postman continues his novel with the intention of illuminating just how our media is impacting us. Postman explains and examines first, how information has been transferred throughout history, developing and changing as technology pushes ahead, and then second, the specific ramifications of television. America has gone through multiple changes in media. Communication has taken shape through speeches, typography, local newspapers, telegraph, and eventually television. Postman notes how every new technology brought about, not only new developments in how the information was transmitted, but also how the change of medium changed the message itself.
After introducing the idea that the medium changes the message, Postman delves into the mid 19th century by introducing it as an age of typography. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas had a series of seven debates with each debate taking hours and hours. They spoke in a way that was literary with the words built the same as a written sentence and the composition of an essay, and hearing speeches like these were a big part of most people's social lives. At this time in history, written words dominated the media landscape and it even affected how people spoke. Written words were perceived as more truthful and official by the masses, as opposed to just regular speech. I can only imagine a life in which I wake up at dawn to start my day with reading a book and plan my schedule around attending s seven hour debate.
Then there was the invention of the telegraph, which was previously not the first thing I would think of when describing historic shifts in media. Yet the telegraph was responsible for the shift from local, relevant news into a competition between newspapers of who could share the most news from the most places. This shift still holds today and even more so. Postman calls the reader to think about the news they receive and evaluate its relevancy to them by asking: does this news affect you personally? will this news alter your plans for the day? will you take any kind of action because of this news? If the answers to these questions are "no" then you have learned something trivial. Before this phenomenon people would read the news to learn about changes that directly affect them, but with the telegraph, it became all about flashy headlines and was distance from the people reading about it. It's the difference between learning about a new business in your town versus a new business somewhere you will likely never go to. I don't discount all news because of this revelation, but I am now a more critical consumer who also wonders if I really needed to know all that stuff about the latest celebrity break up or a murderer three time zones away.
The analysis of the historic buildup of media makes up the first half of the book, but the second is devoted to television. Postman concedes that every media has pros and cons, but when it comes to television he seeks to explain the overall effects this new media form is having. Television is entertainment. TV consists of a variety of topics including evangelists, news, education, and many more kinds of programing. Postman takes on each category chapter by chapter to examine how shows like Sesame Street may be educational but their top priority is entertainment. The ideals of television hold that anything can be entertainment. But according to Neil Postman, maybe not all things need to be packaged with music, dancing, and attractive newscasters. Not everything needs to be entertaining. I feel like further arguing the points in Amusing Ourselves to Death because of how fascinating the discourse was, but I think Postman covered it fairly well already.
Are we indeed amusing ourselves to death? Most likely. But with the power of knowledge we can learn more about this new media form and learn how to be more personally regulated. Postman passed away in 2003, but I would be very curious to know what the sequel to this book would look like because decades later, it seems we're only further along as a society in our rising levels of amusement.