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Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death

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A public disclosure, if properly executed, is used to introduce an issue in society and address the problems with that specific problem. Neil Postman's novel Amusing Ourselves to Death, successfully emphasizes the effect of media in our contemporary society in the form of a public disclosure. Postman utilizes multiple writing techniques to support his claims. Neil Postman's novel Amusing Ourselves to Death was written to inform the modern day society as to how media, specifically television, has negative effects on a persons everyday life by making a person virtually powerless and turning the population into an audience. Postman uses an example of Aldous Huxley to demonstrate that our society has been molded into one where the people are too distracted by the media to examine their lives closer and understand that they are virtually powerless. "Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us"(2nd page of Foreword). We, as a society, love television. We watch it when we are bored, when we are tired, and even keep it on when conversations are being had as background noise. Needless to say we love it. Postman uses this quote to show that television, something that we love, is distracting …show more content…

Everything comes with negatives. “But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple"(Chapter 11 Page 5). It is extremely important to acknowledge and understand that technology can drastically change a society. For the purpose of this essay the technology is television and the change is our culture valuing entertainment over substance, which is turning us into a nation who sits back and lets people run the country the way they

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