{"id":135,"date":"2007-12-12T02:06:31","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T07:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/?p=135"},"modified":"2019-07-24T15:04:45","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T20:04:45","slug":"amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/2007\/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman","title":{"rendered":"Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-137 alignleft\" title=\"amusing_to_death\" src=\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/amusing_to_death.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"121\" height=\"150\"\/><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/74034.Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Amusing Ourselves to Death<\/em><\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nPublic Discourse in the Age of Show Business<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.neilpostman.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Neil Postman<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This important book helps explain the current state of our society, media, and education. Postman begins by contrasting the two great futurist novels,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.challengingdestiny.com\/reviews\/1984.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1984<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.challengingdestiny.com\/reviews\/bravenew.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Brave&nbsp;New World<\/a>. He concludes that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aldous_Huxley\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huxley<\/a> made the&nbsp;better prediction\u2014no need for a police state when we have television!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-832 alignleft\" title=\"neil-postman\" src=\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/neil-postman.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"84\" height=\"114\"\/>His basic premise is that we have moved beyond the age of information-rich&nbsp;typography into a new world dominated by images and sound bites.&nbsp;The unit of discourse is the thirty second television commercial,&nbsp;which attempts to make an emotional connection with viewers rather than&nbsp;inform them. The result is a dumbing down of everything from the evening&nbsp;news to <a href=\"http:\/\/richard.rathe.org\/2005\/09\/powerpoint-is-evil-by-edward-tufte\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">PowerPoint<\/a> dominated&nbsp;classrooms. The one thing he clearly gets wrong is the importance of&nbsp;computers, very forgivable when you consider that computers were mostly&nbsp;used for text and numbers back then. See also these <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethicsandculture.com\/blog\/2018\/amusing-ourselves-to-death-a-review\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">longer&nbsp;reviews<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.command-post.com\/amusing.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2<\/a>)(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.brown.edu\/~sk\/Personal\/Books\/Postman-Amusing-Ourselves-Death\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">3<\/a>).&nbsp;Unfortunately <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/10\/09\/nyregion\/neil-postman-72-mass-media-critic-dies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Postman&nbsp;died in 2003<\/a>, but his legacy lives on!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Neil Postman This important book helps explain the current state of our society, media, and education. Postman begins by contrasting the two great futurist novels,&nbsp;1984 and Brave&nbsp;New World. He concludes that Huxley made the&nbsp;better prediction\u2014no need for a police state when we have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/2007\/amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,8,47],"tags":[452,454],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-education","category-people","category-reviews","tag-powerpoint","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8331,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/8331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmangrove.org\/rathe.org\/richard\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}