Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Amusing Ourselves To Death

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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is a great book. Lots of good information on how our culture shifted from the printed word to imagery mostly because of television. This book goes in depth to how we are being dumb down with technology such as the television. It also covers the history of how information was transmitted to the masses. I think the overall premise of the book is to get across that Aldous Huxley was right in Brave New World that society would be so distracted, pacified and controlled by a culture of pleasure that there would be no uprising or resistance to being oppressed. Basically as we are stripped of our rights we don't notice because we are so distracted with constant pleasure. Now we have the smart phone and that is surely doing the job better than any technology that has ever come along.

Here is the pdf version of the book:  https://zaklynsky.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/postman-neil-amusing-ourselves-to-death-public-discourse-in-the-age-of-show-business.pdf

Here is a really good interview with the author Neil Postman:


*** The author of Amusing Ourselves to Death discussed his experiences in teaching and research and his thesis that television has fundamentally altered the terms of discourse in our society. The interview is part of a series profiling New York politicians and media leaders. ***

Traditionalism

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