In the first chapter of Amusing Ourselves To Death , Neil Postman's major premise is how the rise of television media and the decline of print media is shaping the quality of information we receive.Postman describes how the medium controls the message, he uses examples which include the use of clocks, smoke signals, the alphabet, and glasses.Postman says a society that generally uses smoke signals is not likely to talk about philosophy because it would take to long and be too difficult. Postman also describes the way television changes peoples way of thinking; a fat person will not look good on TV and would less likely be elected President. On the other hand someones body is not important as their ideas when they are expressing them through the radio or print. On TV, visual imagery reigns. Therefore the form of TV works against the content of philosophy. Postman shows how the clock has changed. Postman describes how time was a product of nature measured by the sun and seasons. Now, time is measured by a machine using minutes and seconds. The clock changed us into time-watchers, then time-savers, and finally time-servers. Thus, changing the metaphor for time changed how we view time itself.
In conclusion in the first chapter Neil Postman is trying to say that some people think that if they do not see it on TV then it did not happen nor will it happen. People believe that things that are worthy of paying attention to are on TV.Postman also argues that whether we see it or not in every piece of technology and medium we use an unseen quality. Postman concludes the chapter by saying that our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture.
Chapter 2
In the second chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me Lowen argues that electronic media has decisively and irriversibly changed the character of our environment. He believes that we are now a culture whose information, ideas and epistemology are given form by televison not by the printed word. Loewen describes how discourse in America is now different from what it once was. Loewwen says discourse was once logical, serious, and rational and now under the governance of television it is shriveled and absurd. In addition, he writes about the definitions of truth and the sources in which the definitions come from. Loewen shows how the bias of a medium is unseen throughout a culture and he gives three examples of truth telling.
Not only educational shows accomplish these goals, but fictional television programs can often incorporate information that requires viewers to grapple with a topic using logical reasoning and a global consciousness. In addition, not to diminish the importance of reading, television reaches those who may never pick up a book or who might struggle with reading problems, enabling a broader spectrum of people to interact with cognitive topics. Veith has committed the error of making generalizations about two forms of media when, in truth, the situation varies depending on quality and content. However, what follows these statements is not just fallacious, but
Media, the plural form of medium, describes various ways in which we communicate in society. A phone call, email, radio, computer, news on TV, etc. are all forms of media. In our society today, the media plays a significantly large role in influencing society negatively, twisting one’s perspective of the truth. In author Brooke Gladstone’s, The Influencing Machine, she discusses how media is looked at as an “influencing machine,” that’s controlling the mind of its viewers. Throughout the reading, Gladstone guides her readers through perceptions of media and how it influences them to get readers to understand the truth about media and the manipulation behind it.
In the intro of my essay, I listed vague examples about how television impacts society. Throughout my content I did not elaborate on Postman’s believed the age of typography was, and the difference between the past and the age of show business today. In addition, I lacked comparing Postman’s argument to Francis
In his novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman describes to the reader, in detail, the immediate and future dangers of television. The argument starts out in a logical manner, explaining first the differences between today's media-driven society, and yesterday's "typographic America". Postman goes on to discuss in the second half of his book the effects of today's media, politics on television, religion on television, and finally televised educational programs. He explains that the media consists of "fragments of news" (Postman, 1985, p.97), and politics are merely a fashion show. Although Postman's arguments regarding the brevity of the American attention span and the importance of today's mass media are logical, I do not agree with his opinion of television's inability to educate.
...d that television holds on us, Postman give two ideas. The first idea that he gives, he describes it as ridiculous to create programming that demonstrates how “television should be viewed by the people” (161).
Neil Postman’s thoughts toward television and education would sadly not change after thirty years, but more technologies such as laptops, tablets, cell phones, and even social media would be added to the curriculum. Neil Postman would most likely be appalled at the amount of information I learn through the internet, and the formats that I learn the information in. For example, BuzzFeed News is an application on my cellphone that give information through videos, music, and images. All the formats that television used, but quicker.
He asserts that with the invention of television, writing can basically be eliminated (125). There’s no use for it anymore, after all. What can be more engaging than a form of media that stimulates the senses so? Despite the beliefs of those who lived in the 60s and 70s, the twenty-first century is unfortunately not home to the world of the Jetsons. Writing is still a very powerful form of media, for the very book that this essay is centered around is still influential, forty-nine years later!
In “Wires and Lights in a Box,” the author, Edward R. Murrow, is delivering a speech on October 15, 1958, to attendees of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. In his speech, Murrow addresses how it is his desire and duty to tell his audience what is happening to radio and television. Murrow talks about how television insulates people from the realities in the world, how the television industry is focused on profits rather than delivering the news to the public, and how television and radio can teach, illuminate, and inspire.
John Frow, in his criticism of White Noise, rightfully focuses on television as the defining medium of the Simulacra in DeLillo's America. Television, of course, by definition is a copy; it is a broadcast of something that has been filmed; it is viewed in millions of homes worldwide, each television flickering the same image into the sub-conscious eye. Frow presents a close reading of a speech Murray gives to his students:
In setting an agenda for his argument, Postman capitalizes on the importance of typography itself. In the 16th century, a great epistemological shift occurred where knowledge of every kind was transferred and manifested through printed page. There was a keen sense to be able to read. Newspapers, newsletters, and pamphlets were extremely popular amongst the colonies. At the heart of the great influx of literacy rates was when we relied strictly on print material, not through television, radios, etc. “For two centuries, America declared its intentions, expressed its ideology, designed its laws, sold its products, created its literature and addressed its deities with black squiggles on white paper. It did its talking in typography, and with that as the main feature of its symbolic environment rose to prominence in world civilization” (63).
In the article, “Once Upon a Time, Literature. Now What?” by James Salter, a novelist, by discussing the importance of language and literature, he believes pop culture is a threat to these customs. Salter states that without language there is nothing; without words there can be no understanding of nature, of the human condition, of the world which surrounds us. He goes on to state that learning language is the single most important task a person must accomplish. He writes that without language a human cannot describe or understand such powers as God or the beauty of the universe. Salter blames pop culture for the decline in the use of books and lack of interest in classic literature. While language
In this paper, I will explain how the media exemplified mediated reality and agreement reality
Throughout the book, McKibben compares the two experiences, contrasting the amount of useful information he received from nature, as opposed to the amount of useless, hollow information the television provided. He goes on in the book to make several very important observations about how the television has fundamentally changed our culture and lifestyle, from the local to the global level. Locally, McKibben argues, television has a detrimental effect on communities.
One of the greatest exports of American culture is American media. American media is one of the most widely distributed and consumed cultural forms from the United States. This means that not only do Americans consume large quantities of their own media, but many other countries in the world consume American media, too. People in other countries will not interpret or understand the media in precisely the same ways that Americans will and do, nonetheless, many aspects of American culture and American reality are communicated to numerous viewers as part of the content in the media. The media is an important tool in the discussion of race, class, and gender in America. It takes a savvy viewer to discriminate between and understand what media accurately represents reality, what media does not, or which aspects of experience are fictionalized, and which elements ...
In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he proposed that we focus on the way each medium changes cultures and traditions and reshapes social life, rather than the content. He describes the content of the medium as a “juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” (McLuhan, 32). To him, focusing on the medium was important because he believed that different types of media change the balance of our senses. We start isolating and highlighting different senses.