Amusing Ourselves To Death Postman Analysis

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman uses an abundant amount of logos to argue his claim. The more that is read, the more difficult it is to dismiss his information. This is because of the consistent use of evidence presented in the form of logos. The entire book is incorporated with facts, statistics, dates, and general logical arguments. In chapter six, Postman stresses how television does not allow for the processing of thoughts. He states, “I should like to illustrate this point by offering the case of the eighty-minute discussion provided by the ABC network on November 20, 1983, following its controversial movie The Day After” (88). The discussion was broadcasted on television with intentions to have valued informational content, but failed miserably according to Postman. He argued this in a logical manner. The discussion lacked deep conversation and the speakers spoke in generalities, as the show did not allow an adequate amount of time. This is a great use of logos because it

Neil Postman is deeply worried about what technology can do to a culture or, more importantly, what technology can undo in a culture.  In the case of television, Postman believes that, by happily surrendering ourselves to it, Americans are losing the ability to conduct and participate in meaningful, rational public discourse and public affairs.  Or, to put it another way, TV is undoing public discourse and, as the title of his book Amusing Ourselves to Death suggests, we are willing accomplices.

All throughout history we have used metaphors to describe people, places, events and emotions; so it is perfectly fitting to describe the mediums with which we project our ideas as a metaphor as well. This is Neil Postman 's basis for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Television and other media outlets have conditioned us to accept entertainment in every aspect of life; but most of all it masks the state of public affairs and politics. Through his book, Postman begs that we recognize the ways in which media shapes our lives and how we can use them to serve us instead of hurt us. Broken into two parts, Amusing Ourselves to Death focuses on a historical analysis of media, then discusses the television media-metaphor in more detail. Postman examines how media has infected every aspect of public discourse by prizing entertainment as the standard of truth.

“The whole problem with news on television comes down to this all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on one page of a newspaper”. The average news cast is only twenty-two minutes long,and that's not nearly enough time to cover the days events.In Neil Postman’s essay “The News” Postman talks about the structure,content,and goals and results of a television news cast. The news can be compared to the theatres in terms of its structure. According to Postman, “Music takes us immediately into the realm of the symbolic, a world that is not to be taken literally.”

Postman highlights the power of passivity in society when he contrasts the prophecies of Orwell and Huxley. Orwell predicts the confinement of the future would come from an external source, the government

I disagree with the fears and beliefs that are encapsulated within the excerpts taken from the book Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman. Postman summarizes two different viewpoints, one of Aldous Huxley and one of George Orwell. Orwell’s fears focus mainly on oppression by a ruling government body, where people have no choice in which the way they live. This is a common fear for our society because it has been around for as long as our civilization has been around. An example would be that the country of the United States was formed because of the fear that the Britain would become too oppressive when ruling it. Huxley focuses on a different fear, one that is much more interesting. He “feared that what we love will ruin us”. Rather

In the book ”Amusing ourselves to death” Neil Postman is making an argument about the fact that humans could amuse themselves to death in their lives. Even if when we think of death we think at something terrible,in his book this particular term is asociated with ”amusament” which is a quite unusual asociation of terms. At the beggining of the book the author is making a paralel between Orwell and Huxley. What is quite known about these two is the fact that their ideas were different and the book ”Amusing ourselves to death” states this ideas. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

He starts going into the tv channels we watch, “Fifteen years ago, cable channels like TLC…, Bravo, and the History channel...promised to add texture and and information to the blighted tv landscape. Now these networks run shows about marrying people based on how well they kiss”. These are great examples on how tv channels that are now seen as “trash tv” at one point used to be educational and informative. Another example he used was, “...newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn’t want to hear. We’ve responded by not buying newspapers anymore”. He’s pointing out to the audience that the newspapers know what they’re doing reporting information the reader needs to know and even award winning for doing their job well but as society declines intellectually so does the popularity of informative newspapers.

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.

Neil Postman builds his argument by breaking down television into its component parts: photographs and the telegraph. He argues that both of these media inherently decontextualize their content. Photographs are inherently out of context. They can be nothing else. The content is photographed so that it can be viewed in a different context at a later time. Far from picturing a figure and its background, the photo combines both into one object. The context becomes content. Instead, words provide meaningful context to explain the pictures. This is why newspaper photographs have captions. The telegraph, TV 's other component, dislocates events from geography. It takes information from a context where it is pertinent, meaningful, and relevant and removes it to a location where it has little or no import. Only rarely will this information affect the daily life of the far-off reader. Thus, primarily it is simply interesting, but it is not relevant. It 's entertainment with an alias: News. By combining these irrelevant events with those context-less images, the television is inherently a decontextualizing agent itself. Try watching the television news without sound and imagine watching it without captions.

Postman (1987) claims that television is an evil that destroys the purpose and complexities of public discourse. He argues that important issues are oversimplified and drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Chaffee and Metzger (2001) confirm this assumption by remarking the evolution of print and radio into television and television into new media. Establishing the similarities between Postman’s chief complaints about the television medium and the new media then rearing its ugly head. Chaffee and Metzger indicate the shift in the denotations of mass, media, and communication. With technological advancements, it is impossible to ignore the new media and its impact on modern culture.

In addition, Nyham says that the best solution to this “problem” is a drastic one similar to amputation, meaning a parent should cut off all access to television. (whatever P) This is not only unrealistic, but also would leave a child feeling isolated from their peers. Douglas, on the other hand, is able to suggest a very obtainable solution of using television to teach a child basic media literacy. Nyham also tries to put on an act for the reader by using medical terms and over-exaggerated words throughout the essay. The author tries too hard to sound educated using words like “infernal” (3) or “cynical nattering” (19) and it comes off as a pathetic attempt to sound credible. Douglas embarrasses the Boston Globe columnist in this category. Douglas’ credibility in this subject remains unchallenged by Nyham’s futile attempts to “wow” the reader with a few “SAT” words. Throughout both essays, there is a communal agreement between Nyham and Douglas on the fact that television has the ability to affect this generation’s children in a very negative way; however, Douglas believes if used correctly, television shows can be a tool for parents to use for not only distracting their child for a few minutes, but also for teaching them essential life skills at a young age.

The age of newspapers has passed. Laura Finley’s “The Decline of Newspapers Is Bad for the US” asserts that without newspapers citizens are “deprived of information essential to understanding their world”. Newspapers are the source at which the world communicates and when they come to a cease, the information also ceases.

The 20th century has witnessed dramatic developments in the history of media communications as well as human society. During the first half of the last century, electronic media such as the telegraph, radio and television to name a few were invented and became prevalent. Afterwards, the internet came into being and developed at an unprecedented rate to the point where it is now widely accepted that human history has entered into an information age. As claimed by a number of scholars, the appearance of new types of media can bring about dramatic influences on living conditions. Among them, Harold Innis, pioneer in this area of communication studies, is influential, firstly by employing two dimensions to media, namely time and space, and

The book “Creation of the Media, by Paul Starr,” informs us of the events throughout the history of Journalism. Starr lays out his beliefs as to how the media has become what it is now, from the creation of early newspaper all the way to broadcasting. Starr emphasizes the impact that the post office has had on journalistic outlets over the years, and how it has changed America’s culture. I agree with Starr in the respect that the evolution of the post office has helped mold the communication values of American’s commutation culture throughout the years.