Comparison Of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death

Prior to the Neolithic Revolution, news and traditions were passed down over time by word of mouth. With each additional person, the tale got altered based on that person’s point of view and values. Overtime, these common methods of interpersonal communication, such as the ways humans communicated and what they communicated about, shifted with the change in technology. However, the altering of information remained the same. Much like the oral tradition, modern day media has a way of altering reality. In Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, he argues that the media, both on television and in print, have negatively affected and altered the way societies communicate. Together, the varying mediums cause phenomenon’s in the world to

In order to prove his point, he begins by comparing modern American society to the dystopian societies described in George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. According to Postman, “Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information” and portrayed that fear in his novel by having the government alter historical documents and dispose of any information that did not support the ruling regime (xix). Similarly, “Huxley feared those who would give so much [information] that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism” (xix). By distributing information quickly to people, it become near impossible to thoroughly process and reflect on what is happening. As a result, people become passive and accept what they are told, rather than challenge it. Both instances can be found in today’s American society. According to Postman this concept is a “figment created by our technological imagination” that contextualizes the matter at hand over time (8). Due to the ability to find out information in a moment’s notice, it is easy for information to get overlooked. After all, a typical newscast does not only focus on one or two major stories, but rather gives a brief overview of many smaller stories. Overtime, facts have become blended together and making it more difficult to decipher information that is accurate from those that are altered by

According to Dr. Jean Louis Ntang Beb and Dr. Shantella Sherman, people are largely impacted by entertainment and different forms as media when they become more readily available and prominent in people’s lives. Postman refers to this as ‘media – metaphors’ that “classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, [and] argue a case for what the world is like” (10). The media is able to do this because it knows it has a heavy influence in an individual's life. When an entity has knowledge of power, it is able to manipulate its delivery in anyway it wants. This is because at the end of the day, even if the information received is not practical, society will still end up talking about with