Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Through its popularity and resulting power, television - whose bottom-line is simply to entertain - has caused a revolution in our views of education, religion, and politics. Indeed, Postman convincingly demonstrates how we have undergone a paradigm-shift in the way that we think in general. Arguing that the very nature of the medium of television prevents us from reflecting on the material transmitted to us, Postman explains how we have ushered in the age of "disinformation." He also explains that televisions effects are far-reaching, with adverse consequences on print and radio. Normally, one would disregard a 15-year old book discussing emergent technology as being horribly outdated. On the contrary, Postmans message bears even greater relevance to us today than it did to his audience in 1985.

This is a great book with an incredible power to change the way that you look at things.

Because this book is intended to be accessible to as many people as possible, Postman keeps the communication jargon to a minimum, which makes this book both an enjoyable, easy read as well as a book that makes one ponder complex issues. I definitely recommend it to everyone, especially those in the teaching and communication professions.

I think author Neil Postman has a lot of valuable things to say and reflect on. Several years ago I read his book Technopoly, which, along with several other books and articles I read at the time, led me to present a session at the 2001 TCEA convention entitled, "Remember the Luddites: Asking Critical Questions about Educational Technology." Technopoly was published in 1993, but now I have gone back to Postmans 1985 work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. It seems a bit dated, with the advent of the Internet and all the changes which have come as a result, but I found the book to be none-the-less quite relevant and worthwhile. His overall theme of how our society (esp in the US) is tending to become more and more focused on entertainment via multimedia has many implications not only in an educational arena, but also for everyday life-- in the way we set our priorities, and in the final analysis-- the ways we choose (hopefully intentionally) to spend our limited heartbeats. Those small choices day to day add up to have a considerably dramatic cumulative effect. And his point is well taken about our typical, cultural LACK of intentionality when it comes to our consumption of multimedia content-- esp. television programming.

In the May 2004 edition of Wired magazine, an article entitled "Watch This Way" documents a conversation between various moguls and pundits of our ever-growing entertainment industry. I found Yair Landau of Sony Pictures comment that "There are three basic human entertainment experiences that go back to the cave: storytelling, game-playing, and music" to be compelling. Author William Gibson added to this list of basic entertainment experiences "being part of the tribe." I have been giving a fair amount of thought lately to the value and opportunities posed by digital storytelling authoring tools in the early 21st Century. Most of my thinking along these lines is very optimistic and energetic, but it is good to temper this enthusiasm with some sober analysis like Postmans. I wouldnt call this blog entry a book-review per se-- I more think of it as a few reflections about some key points Postman makes in the book that I would like to remember and others may find worthwhile as well. As Landau pointed out, the desire to seek entertainment through storytelling and music is most likely universal. These are drives which transcend time and space. I am reminded of the futurists in the early part of the twentieth century (I think) who predicted that technology would lead to vast amounts of leisure time for people: with washing machines, dishwashers, and speedy cooking devices, people would have loads of free time to pursue other activities which were unthinkable in earlier times. I have laughed at that seemingly ridiculous prediction in the past, because today in the first decade of the twenty-first century, we seem to generally be harried, stressed, busy people who do not have enough time in the day for all the activities and demands which fill our schedules and minds. Yet despite all this busyness, we are clearly still finding large amounts of time to spend watching TV and entertaining ourselves in other ways. According to the Wired article previously cited, more and more Americans are watching LESS television today, but spending more time playing electronic games and surfing the Internet. That was not a trendline predicted by Postman in 1984. But we shouldnt be too hard on him for that oversight, Bill Gates apparently didnt see the Internet coming either. Despite this fact, Postmans analysis about our apparent intrinsic drive to seek entertainment via multimedia is still a cogent thesis for 21st century netizens.