Amusing Ourselves to Death by Postman

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Reflective Essay on Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman provides a critical analysis of the media environment in 1985. He explores the role and impact of the media by addressing different sectors of society, naming religion, politics, news, and education. Although this book was written prior to 1985, its relevance is far more evident today than ever; we are living in a nation in which entertainment is the focus and aim of each sector in American society and in which our notation of truth or knowledge has been greatly redefined. That is to say, we are “on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (4) in this 2014 contemporary media environment by being constantly exposed to the internet (i.e. Twitter, email, Blackboard, YouTube); while our notation of knowing whether something as being accurate revolves around the lines of: lets Google it.
In Postman’s novel, we are given the overall thesis with the following phrase: “we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (4). It is through this former phrase that Postman is able to convey his critical analysis of the media environment in 1985. His critical analysis revolves around television; he conveys how this technology has altered the way in which Americans think and carry out their daily life. He goes on further to explain how television has reshaped epistemology and has led for Americans to expect some form of “entertainment” from each sector of society. In other words, the way in which we knew something as truth, or acquired knowledge from, has been altered due to television while simultaneously causing for Americans to expect politics, religion, education, and news (just to name a few) to be “entertaining.”
Postman’s bases hi...

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...re uncommonly short, its design leans heavily on pictures, charts and other graphics, some of them printed in various colors” (111).

Postman addresses how prior to television American was based on the printed word, which appealed to coherence. Yet, with the shifted from a typographic American to a television based society, television can be said to “promote incoherence and triviality” (80). It was the introduction of television that our public discourse suffered; our way of talking and thinking about things has changed (even though our message may be the same as before television).
In short, Postman asserts how our notion of “being informed” (107) has been reshaped by television. Television is creating misinformation, or misleading information since it acts as the illusion of knowledgably of a topic and due to the news being presented as a form of entertainment.

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