Amusing Ourselves To Death By Neil Postman

Neil Postman is not convinced that technology would improve our ability to participate in a public discourse. In his book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, we are exposed to topics that most people would avoid. Postman believes that technology would only disable our critical minds, forcing us to be mindless followers. Even though we know that television is poisoning our minds with unfiltered content, most of us still prefer television as our primary media of information. Postman acknowledged that this problem lies in the nature of human communication. The current media reveals information in an oral culture instead of printed language, which is why there would be more bias involved. In the foreword of the book, Huxley feared of “those who would

In his argument, Postman described how technology is affecting our way of thinking. The main suspect in this case is television. In his book, Postman pointed out one of the significant facts in the twentieth century, which was: “the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television”(8). As soon as the shift began, the social institutions involved in printed content were forced to learn the language of the television. Since television’s content is entertainment-oriented, serious forms of public discussions were also modified to be more entertaining. Postman believes that, “whatever the original and limited of its use may have been, a medium has the power to fly far beyond that context into new and unexpected ones”(18). When exposed to writing, humans’ minds are still able to respond with a critical reaction. But that is not the case with television and modern-day media. This is because of what Postman described as “media-metaphor”. He suggested that the media works like a metaphor, giving us powerful implications to enforce their definition of reality. Many television programs and advertisement are inexplicitly telling us