In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Neil Postman writes, “For one thing, its attention span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards. Is there any audience of Americans today who can endure seven hours of talk? or five. or three. Postman 47” to highlight the contrast between Americans in the 1800’s to Americans today. He posits a simple question, could today’s Americans stay engaged in oral discourse spanning multiple hours? I have a simpler answer: No. But why can’t we? in Postman’s book he states “People of a television culture need “plain language” both visually and visually (Postman 47)” suggesting that the complex rhetorical language used amongst the cited Lincoln-Douglas debates would be lost in translation today. While I agree that America would not be …show more content…
Our technology determines our culture and not the way we think. With this, we can see that the introduction of literature, television, the internet, smartphones, and most recently short-form social media platforms are the main culprits for our lack of attention span. And while lack of attention span itself seems to be an innocuous problem, it is an underlying cause of much larger issues. As cited by David Progue from CBS News, a shorter attention span leads to a myriad of downsides, it makes individuals more error-prone, it makes tasks take longer to complete, and more troublesome; and it increases stress. With attention span playing such a vital role in our lives, how could we improve it, or at least mitigate the decay? According to an article by George Washington University, we can try meditation, practice attentive listening, focus on single tasks, limit social media usage, and devote more time to reading. Postman would certainly agree with the end, stating “But most people could read and did
In 1988, Neil Postman wrote an article, ‘Future Shock,’ that criticized television as the primary cause of the issues with the fall of the human intelligence. In the article, Postman describes how intelligence fell due to various nemeses such as moral fevor, ignorance, cruelty, superstition, neglect, and cowardice. Postman elaborated how Germany went from being the most educated and literate country in the 1920s to a pool of irrational scholars in 1936 after the eradication of art criticism. Art criticism was the primary reason for the high level of intelligence in countries like Germany. He noted that America was established by a group of intellectuals and bodies that went on to ground the various intelligence organizations. Nonetheless, the
While reading through the article, I noticed that the loss of focus she spoke of was happening in my life. I agree that we as a society are trying to become more productive, but multitasking is not the way to go. Tugend mentions that the human brain cannot efficiently handle doing multiple things at once (716). I see this in my daily life when trying to carry two or more items while trying to talk on the phone, it usually ends in disaster. However, multitasking is productive in some ways such as listening to classical music while studying. Tugend does a great job at getting personal with the reader; she uses situations that everyone has been through. Throughout the article, Tugend kept me entertained by switching between a casual and informational
In the intro of my essay, I listed vague examples about how television impacts society. Throughout my content I did not elaborate on Postman’s believed the age of typography was, and the difference between the past and the age of show business today. In addition, I lacked comparing Postman’s argument to Francis
Relating back to my thesis, it seems like the use of electronic devices is something that is a definitely a growing issue. And while Carr does not have all the evidence in the world to prove his point, he does have enough to back up what he is saying. Carr is able to use a relatable topic to help draw discussion on something that may be an issue in the future. Also, another strong point in this article, is the fact that almost everyone can relate to having a shortened attention span when reading for long periods of time. It is also evident that the strong points outweigh the weak in this article. Nicholas Carr has many strong points in his article. He successfully proves that what he has to say is worthy of his readers time, and that maybe we should all take caution to how much time we spend on the
In the chapter “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era,” from The New Brain, written by Richard Restak, Restak makes some very good points on his view of multitasking and modern technology. He argues that multitasking is very inefficient and that our modern technology is making our minds weaker. Multitasking and modern technology is causing people to care too much what other people think of them, to not be able to focus on one topic, and to not be able to think for themselves.
Neil Postman’s thoughts toward television and education would sadly not change after thirty years, but more technologies such as laptops, tablets, cell phones, and even social media would be added to the curriculum. Neil Postman would most likely be appalled at the amount of information I learn through the internet, and the formats that I learn the information in. For example, BuzzFeed News is an application on my cellphone that give information through videos, music, and images. All the formats that television used, but quicker.
Technology and our exposure to it are changing our lives; of this there is no doubt. The issue regarding what form that change will take and the effects of it on our physical and emotional health, however, are more contentious, and experts’ opinions on it run the gamut. In “Attention Deficit: The Brain Syndrome of our Era”, neurologist Dr. Richard Restak examines what effect technology has on our brains, and posits that technology, as well as the increasing demand on our brains to perform multiple tasks at once, is causing a decrease
Postman bases his argument on the belief that public discourse in America, when governed by the epistemology of the printing press, was "generally coherent, serious, and rational" (16) because the reader was required to ingest, understand, and think about the logic of the author's arguments before coming to a verdict. In effect, intelligence in a print-based world "implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of concepts and generalizations" (26). However, with the emergence of television and its rapid ascendancy in our culture, Postman argues that discourse has become "shriveled and absurd" (16). TV, he says, assaults us with fleeting images and disconnected bits of information with no context except for the "pseudo-context" which is manufactured "to give fragmented and irrelevant information a seeming use" (76). In effect, TV demands a certain kind of content-the "medium is the message" in the words of Marshall McLuhan-that Postman believes is suitable to the world of show business and hostile to the print-based world of logical thinking (80). This is not to say that TV ignores important subjects such as current affairs, politics, religion, science, and e...
Electronic media is inferior to print media due to the fact that electronic media can be bias, selective, and evasive for the purpose of entertainment. Electronic media serves as a form of entertainment with a main goal of serving their ratings rather than serving the people. It would seem that Postman would agree with this theory since he describes electronic media as a form of entertainment rather than a reliable source of information and facts in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death.
In his novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman describes to the reader, in detail, the immediate and future dangers of television. The argument starts out in a logical manner, explaining first the differences between today's media-driven society, and yesterday's "typographic America". Postman goes on to discuss in the second half of his book the effects of today's media, politics on television, religion on television, and finally televised educational programs. He explains that the media consists of "fragments of news" (Postman, 1985, p.97), and politics are merely a fashion show. Although Postman's arguments regarding the brevity of the American attention span and the importance of today's mass media are logical, I do not agree with his opinion of television's inability to educate.
Technological advances though have been moving fast and some people would argue that it is too much for our brains to handle. As Restak states in his essay,” This technologically driven change in the brain is the biggest modification in the last 200,000 years (when the brain volume of Homo sapiens reached the modern level).” Our brains are experiencing a change in how it functions, and this last quote by Restak shows just how different the human brain has became since our last change in evolution. One of the changes that are forced on our brain is that of multitasking and when we are faced with the ability to focus our attention. Restak shows an example in a situation where there are crawlers at the bottom of a television screen. He comments how he could not keep focus on what he was watching and kept on looking at the words that were at the bottom of the screen because they were made to catch your attention. Another example is that of split screen interviews, which makes us divide our visual attention. With all of this we have become more high strung and our brains function have changed for the better. Restak would call this as us being more hyperactive, where we are now more frenetic, more distracted, and more fragmented. Yet all of this would be for the better for our species. The technology is only going the
In Postman’s perspective, America has moved along with an incredible way of communication to accommodate itself with the several different interferences that are brought on by television. This ends up killing the printed language (156).
Would you lose your journalistic integrity over one million dollars just to increase your audience base? For me personally I would decline the money and not subject my audience to an unwanted change for personal gain. Neil Postman’s book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, argues that television is all about entertainment and nothing else. Postman makes several points in his book pertaining to televised news as examples. On the evening of January 31 2018, I decided to test Postman’s arguments by tuning into the PBS NewsHour. After putting Postman’s arguments to the test I soon found that they were correct; “if it bleeds it leads”, news anchors are just actors, stories of little value get little air time, and there is an overwhelming disconnect between stories.
The Pew Research Center focuses on technology-related things and conducted a survey for 2,462 teachers. Ninety percent of those teachers believed that technology was causing their students to become more easily distracted with shorter attention spans. An article on Huffington Post mentioned a study that showed that students could not focus on their homework for more than two minutes before having to look at some kind of electronical device like their phone or television. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that about half of students from the ages of eight to eighteen do their homework while using some kind of electronical device. Technology has affected our focus so much that we can't even focus on the little things for too long. Studies have even shown that people who use the internet at work change tabs or check their email about thirty-seven times an hour! All this multitasking can cause us to become more distracted. Sometimes, we can even become distracted towards the people around us.
The Future of Technology in Sport The panel that discussed the future roles that technology will play in sport included Mark-Anothony Ashfield (Deloitte Canada), Samantha Phelan (digital architect and monetization consultant), Derek Chaisson (Nightpuck Technology), and Trevor Georgie (Saint John Sea dogs). This panel discussed the development of technology and the various roles it plays in sport and the continued implementation of technology in to sport. Ashfield talked about how you do not have to be someone who understands computers and how technology works to be in the industry, instead he spoke about understanding and taking advantage of new opportunities in sport that technology advancements have to offer.