Amusing Ourselves To Death Summary

As the book Amusing Ourselves To Death, discusses some of McLuhan’s ideology on technology by extending our thoughts would impact us through the Internet today is an “extension of the body,” as the internet has changed the way we think and the way we learn has extended our way of thinking. Though the media, television, and social media is where we get our information today with the technology of Internet and social media platforms being introduced to society. I believe that the Internet can make the process better from television because it is print media and you have to use deeper thought that just viewing material. With television however, what gets the most attention is entertaining and uses minimal thought. Our Internet is set up with the content of choice there are only so

many choices the Internet though allows for self-selection. At any time though you can remove yourself from it if you get bored. We now can do everything through the Internet and do not have to physically be present giving us capabilities we have never had before as the whole world is connected through the Internet in a so called “global village”. It extends our thoughts and gives us information out into the “cloud” or social media platforms that we do not actually have to be real person, reality therefore; is also changed.

As Postman states, “Each medium like language itself, make possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression for sensibility. Which, of course, is what McLuhan meant in saying the “medium is the message.” Postman has many similarities to McLuhan except that instead of a medium the media is a metaphor. He describes how the technology has changed our extensions of thought and intellect. As Postman states, “We used to have to have extensions of thought and intellect when we the printed word allowed us to have reflection pauses and extended or freeze our thoughts and we used to be thinking individuals with printed word by reading books and the newspaper for our answers” (). In today’s technology there is a possibility to use it as an extension tool the Internet gives us entertainment however, it also connects us socially with people from all over the world at a click of a button, which has given society new platforms to socially connect with others instead of just in

person. We might be able to find out information quicker and has taken us back to a print media based system with social media. However, there are negatives to social media platforms as postman states, “ In a sea of information, there was very little of it to use. A man in Maine and a man in Texas could converse, but not about anything either of them knew or cared very much about. The telegraph may have made the country into “one neighborhood,” but it was a peculiar one, populated by strangers who knew nothing but the most superficial facts about each other” (Postman, pg. 67). We have moved even further to where people don’t even tune into the news anymore because of the Internet. We have the applications on our cell phones and people can just quickly skim over the highlights and news programs are becoming irrelevant. Even though our network has extended we now rather communicate through a machine or enjoy experiences alone making our personal relationship amputated and artificial. As Postman states, “Because the television commercial is the single most voluminous form of public communication in our society, it was inevitable that Americans would accommodate themselves to the philosophy of television commercials. By “accommodate,” I mean that we accept them a normal and plausible form of discourse” (Postman).
Technology comes with many amputations. Surrounded by advertisements that make us skimmers of news and lazy also re- wires our brains to think like machines. According to Postman, “Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. The nature of the media is to suppress the content our ability to reason is eroded because of sound bytes and we don’t even know what we are getting from it. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes an macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for picnic in the country these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them.” (Postman, pg. 128,). We are so entertained we no longer pay attention to what is important to us and live in a false reality. Therefore, changing our social skills and how we interact with each other. For example, now we scroll through Netflix for hours to find something that will best amuse us at the moment. There is so much information out there you are going to listen to the information that is most entertaining to you. Americans have stopped paying attention to the important information, so now we do not have the ability to tell the truth we have lost the ability to reason or have intellectual conversations.
Americans should ask themselves do you pay attention to your local politics or policies? The answer is no. Instead, our citizens are paying more attention to global terrorist attacks happening in distant locations. A world of fragments is what we are living in with the inability to understand the information or do anything about it. In our current elections, the media is trying to make the candidates appearances enhanced by trying to make them look more attractive for debates and such. When attractiveness is mentioned in Amusing Ourselves to Death, it is clear that looks matter in television and you will be taken more seriously or have more “creditability” if you are attractive. Our election spectacle has become a way to amusement. We have made our candidates into a joke, and it has removed an assumed humanity. Political campaigns are ran by thirty second campaign commercials the candidates no longer have to face “position papers” or write books on the issues because they would loose compared to the candidate who ran an attention grabbing commercial. We also have branding strategies how we tag people like “lying Ted” or “crooked Hillary” that are given and eventually become truth even though we have no proof because society does not know the difference between what is false and what is truth. Even worse that the mass media impacts our way of seeing politicians and how we understand our politics and loss of confidence in politics, therefore, we lose faith in the system. As Postman states, “Television has achieved the status of “meta-medium” an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well. We live in more of a “Huxley” situation than ever before, “television clearly does impair the student’s freedom to read, and it does so with innocent hands, so to speak. Television does not ban books it simply displaces them. The fight against censorship is a nineteenth century issue, which was largely won in the twentieth. What we are confronted with now is the problem posed by the economic and symbolic structure of television. Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it” (Postman, Chapter 10 page 141,). Which is one of the reasons we are in the current political election situation. We are just now realizing the corruption because we were distracted by entertainment and instant gratification. Quite possibly even though Americans are mad at this system we will eventually “disconnect” with our government and go back to the entertainment distraction allowing our government to remain corrupt.
Postman envisioned with the Internet we just keep to ourselves more now than when we just relied on newspapers. Therefore, it has a social impact on us because we don’t have empathy and we aren’t talking to each other about the issues we face. We loose our interactions with other people and real relationships. Our habits have also changed, As Postman stated “The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well informed people in the Western World” (Postman, #106,). Entertainment is the main cause of public discourse not all television is for entertainment. Audiences prefer to see quick moving edited images. American Internet and television has developed long lines of not only the bias of the media but also the interests of the viewers. According to the video, “we have a new technology in its American expression that tends to degrade literate rational discourse and it changes it” (Video). As Postman states, “one can hardly overestimate the damage that such juxtapositions do to our sense of the world as a serious place. The damage is especially massive to youthful viewers who depend so much on television for their clues as to how to respond to the world. In watching television news, they, more than any other segment of the audience, are drawn into an epistemology based on the assumption that all reports of cruelty and death are greatly exaggerated and, in any case, not to be taken seriously or responded to sanely” (Postman, Chapter 6 Page #105 ,).
The amputation with the Internet is creditability, for example in a poll the anchorman was more highly trusted than the President of the United States. It doesn’t matter if they are telling the truth just if they are believable. As Postman states, “As the game of that name uses facts as a source of amusement, so do our sources of news. It has been demonstrated many times that a culture can survive misinformation and false opinion. It has not yet been demonstrated whether a culture can survive if it takes the measure of the world in twenty-two minutes. Or if the value of its news is determined by the number of laughs it provides” (Postman, #113 ,). There is an issue if we wonder what we mean by truth as Postman states a “dancing girl” medium has become the central medium of the culture and other forms pushed aside awareness may be the solution most people now don’t see any issue with television and so we must have awareness to the public of it’s effects. As Postman stated in Amusing Ourselves To Death, “Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. That is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago” (Postman, pg. 80,).
The history of technology it has a way of taking control of culture and the habits of the culture and continues to do so with technology today as is destroys our past culture. Technology in education through does make a difference. “Television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it. If television is a continuation of anything, it is of a tradition begun by the telegraph and photograph in the mid nineteenth century, not by the printing press in the fifteenth” (Postman, Chapter 6 Pg. # 84, ). Computer technology has been accepted in schools without asking the effects or consequences it might have on the culture. A huge jump has happened that the technology has the best use of us. The forces of technology are very powerful and are underestimated by people who say that the Internet and television is neutral it is what we do with it that matters. There are many extensions to the Internet from television as our technology expands and opening up communication lengths many never though possible. However, with that there are less personal interactions that affect our brains and our societal health that are serious amputations and repercussions attached to the Internet. However even though there aren’t many educational purposes to television if used and educated on correctly the Internet could be used as a tool to make us the most informed society ever.