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

become too blurred to clearly comprehend, leaving people with no choice but to accept the perception of society they are given.
In his preface, Postman discusses the speed at which the media distributes information and the power obtained in the process.

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feared those who would deprive us of information” and portrayed that fear in his novel by having the government alter historical documents and dispose of any information that did not support the ruling regime (xix).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

personal or professional bias.
Along with altering the information distributed, media sources have changed by becoming commercialized and a source of entertainment. One example is an evening news broadcast; before any information is given, there is an introduction filled with music and fancy graphics that introduce all the different television personalities (102). Similarly, news corporations have increased the amount of commercials shown in between segments (104). These have caused the personalities that present the news and new products to become more looked at than the news itself. As a result, information no longer has a lasting impacting on an individual’s life. Postman refers to the ideological shift away from traditional media, as an information source towards the media as a source for entertainment, as the ‘Age of Television’. In the process, it causes society to become desensitized to the information they are given and only focus on the glitz and glam associated with the information's delivery.
Due to the Age of Television, the mechanisms tied with media are changing the discourse of American society.

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

others.
In order to better understand the shift towards the Age of Television, Postman’s book emphasizes the role time has placed in the shift of media ecology from the Age of Reason. At the time, printed material was a consistent force of information that was rarely altered once it was written. As a result, the Age of Reason was a closer mirror of reality. According to Postman, “American public discourse, being rooted in the bias of printed words, was serious, inclined towards rational argument….made up of meaningful content” (53). At the time, people were shown the world as it was, not what it should become. Today, the media has shifted away from reporting the issues. As a result, the reassurance that information is reliable is almost nonexistent due to the rapid spread of information that decontextualizes issues until they are seen as not practical. With Postman viewpoints in mind, his work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, directly corresponds to what was discussed in class regarding the media and the impact it has on society. During lectures, the class analyzed the ways different media sources can control what their audiences see. Therefore, a viewer only learns whatever the media chooses to present to him or her. Like Postman argues, their control over information molds society into becoming desensitized and decontextualized.
After the discussion at his panel (Appendix), Postman uses the concepts discussed by Huxley in Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 to talk about the impact information has on a society. Information has the power to alter the way people communicate and see the world through the evolution of media ecology. Yet, in order to decipher its power, one must take into account time. During the Age of Reason, when something was written, even if years passed, information would be powerful in its consistency. However, with the Age of Television, the rapid delivery and manner of delivery of information makes it powerful. With this evolution in mind, it would not be a major issue if society adopted Postman’s mentality that the media negatively affects society. This is because rapid exposure causes information to bleed together, blurring our vision of reality and of the world in which we live in. If there were opposition, the facts themselves would preserver and society would be able to regain their power over information.