In 1988, Neil Postman wrote an article, ‘Future Shock,’ that criticized television as the primary cause of the issues with the fall of the human intelligence. In the article, Postman describes how intelligence fell due to various nemeses such as moral fevor, ignorance, cruelty, superstition, neglect, and cowardice. Postman elaborated how Germany went from being the most educated and literate country in the 1920s to a pool of irrational scholars in 1936 after the eradication of art criticism. Art criticism was the primary reason for the high level of intelligence in countries like Germany. He noted that America was established by a group of intellectuals and bodies that went on to ground the various intelligence organizations. Nonetheless, the …show more content…
However, the decrease in the level of intelligence in America would not entail feeing of scholars, public proclamations, complacency, or any form of barbarisms. There are other various ways of suppressing information, and in this case, is through the American culture. Postman elaborates his point on the degrading American intelligence to two films. He first describes the first movie that involved the South African natives living in the Kalahari desert that was mesmerized by a coca-cola bottle that fell from a plane. The people consequently Last Name 3 believe that the bottle was a gift from their gods. They start to idolize the bottle, and soon members of the community abandon their culture in the fight for the bottle as jealousy and division creep in their society. Postman compares the container to the introduction of new technologies in the world’s culture. The leader of community discards the bottle stating that it does not even produce alluring music. The second movies were about a crook producer who made an unintelligent musical film on Hitler that he believed would fail and he would escape with the millions of …show more content…
The commercials appear in the press and reduce the matters to entertainment and trivialities. Given that television is the primary channel for public communication, it programs people’s minds through their images and determines the direction the people take. Postman claims that these claims are not a form of criticism of the visual arts, but types of communication become positive or adverse contingent on the link they have to symbols and functions in the social order. Television, the internet, and social media pay a similar role in the society. Since the emergence of technology a few decades ago, the various forms of communication has developed. The internet, being one of them, is primarily an international computer linkage that began over four decades ago. It is a global open linkage of networks depending on the protocol. The latest emergence of the contemporary internet is social media which consists of applications grounded on technological and ideological establishments of Web 2.0 and which facilitate the formation and exchange of use produced content (Haier, Flynn & Sternberg). It is a new kind of interaction
The next piece of data used is from Harvard. Harvard is known as a home of scholars and highly intelligent individuals. Fridman challenges this connotation by citing the “rampant anti-intellectualism” within the college. This data and the backing that follows has a profound effect on the reader. If even the highest point in America’s intellectual scene has been poisoned by this stigma then the implication is that nowhere is safe for those seeking unbridles
Has the modernization of the twentieth century made us smarter or has it hindered our brains to think in 140 characters or less? In the article, “Brain Candy”, Steven Johnson argues that the “steady upward trajectory” in global I.Q scores is due to what we thought was making us dumber: popular culture. However, this romantic critic is too rooted in his technology- age ideology. While Johnson claims that everything bad is good for us, family themed-programing is being replaced by fabricated reality television shows and channels specialized in selling, video games are hindering our reading and writing skills, and books are becoming things of the past. Johnson insists that popular culture is making us smarter, but is stupid the new smart?
Some of the topics discussed in Civilization in the United States were "The Intellectual Life," "The City," "Economic Opinion," "History," "Business," "Engineering," "Politics," "Journalism," and "Philosophy" to name a few. As critic Arthur Schlesinger notes in his review of the book, the topics and authors included in this account of
Fridman employs a values based premise that states that America’s insignificance towards education creates degrading phrases for the intellectual through “There is something wrong with the system of values in a society that only has derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious” (P.1). He expresses that American society’s values, which degrades education, results in demeaning terms to address intelligence which is wrong since intellectuals don’t deserve to be classified negatively for their efforts in studying. He expresses that educated people being offensively labeled due to American society’s values of minoring education is wrong, in order for readers of the New York Times to appreciate intellectuals since their success in studying is not worth being degraded due to it being in the field of education. Next, he utilizes a sociological base premise that conveys America's culture of supporting non education through “For America’s sake, the anti-intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought” (P.6.). This indicates the culture of America is wrong since promoting uneducated citizens regards America as a incompetent country that has unqualified leadership due to unscholarly decisions. Fridman states that American culture advocating unintelligence is wrong in order for readers of the New York Times to appreciate the intellectuals since they
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.
The many evils that exist within television’s culture were not foreseen back when televisions were first put onto the market. Yet, Postman discovers this very unforgiveable that the world did not prepare itself to deal with the ways that television inherently changes our ways of communication. For example, people who lived during the year 1905, could not really predict that the invention of a car would not make it seem like only a luxurious invention, but also that the invention of the car would strongly affect the way we make decisions.
Neil Postman, writer, educator, critic and communications theorist, has written many books, including Technopoly. Mr. Postman is one of America's most visible cultural critics, who attempts to analyze culture and history in terms of the effects of technology on western culture. For Postman, it seems more important to consider what society loses from new technology than what it gains. To illustrate this, Postman uses the Egyptian mythology called "The Judgment of Thamus," which attempts to explain how the development of writing in Egyptian civilization decreases the amount of knowledge and wisdom in the society. He traces the roots of technology to show how technology impacts the moral and intellectual attitude of people. Postman seems to criticize societies with high technologies, yet he seems naive to the benefits technology has given society. Postman can be considered fairly conservative in his views regarding technology. His lucid writing style stimulates thoughts on issues in today's technological society; however because of his moral interpretations and historical revisions, his ethos is arguable. For every good insight he makes, he skips another mark completely.
Fridman explains that anti- intellectualism in pop culture is higher in america than in almost any other country. Whereas in countries in Eastern Asia, education and the pursuit of intelligence is respected and admired. Throughout the world jobs such as professors are looked at as “the most… rewarding positions”, but in America, it is the Michael Phelps and Aaron Rodgers, that are in prestigious positions. This is a major side effect of anti- intellectualism, because America cannot compete with the rest of the world academically. Fridmans questions how a country, like the U.S., can compete in a race for technology or remain a “political and cultural force” when it puts it emphasize on social and physical abilities, and not academic success. Fridman argues that in order for America to maintain its status as a world power, it needs to aim focus against anti-
Fridman’s argument is extremely convincing in the proving his point through the use of drawing comparisons and juxtaposing them, adding a tone shift, and adding rhetorical questions that include anaphora to help emphasize his point in the passage. Leonid Fridman in “America Needs Its Nerds” reflects American ideological thinking in a harsh indifferent way. With the use of various rhetorical devices Leonid Fridman successfully develops his argument that for America’s sake, anti- intellectual values must be fought, and the need for America to reestablish its value system to remain a world- class power.
America is slowly “dumbing down”, according to Psychology Today, due to a rising and devastating movement of anti- intellectualism in the American culture. It rejects matters of science, art, and humanities because of superiority, ignorance, and just from being naïve to situations. Anti –intellectualism is when a person disregards intellect and reason in solving viable situations and understanding the reality of the situation; but, instead uses action and emotions to solve them. Now, this is not saying that those who are uneducated and unintelligent are classified as anti-intellectualist; even those who are educated and judicious are subjective. It is said best by David Niose, “Social dysfunction can be traced to the abandonment of reason.”
There is a plague that has been in circulation for the hundreds of years, sweeping across the nation, seizing control of citizen’s minds. The plague is called anti-intellectualism. Taken right from Random House Dictionary, an anti-intellectual is someone who is ignorant or hostile to artistic and cultural values, against modern academic, artistic, social, religious, and the other theories associated with them. Richard Hofstadter, who wrote Anti-intellectualism in American Life, defines anti-intellectualism as a “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it.” Ralph Waldo Emerson commented in 1837, "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury creates a society where an escapist attitude, or the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment, results in the decline of thought and the rise of mass conformity (Schramer 2008). The similarities that exist between Fahrenheit 451 and American society are a cause for alarm (Schramer 2008). Susan Jacoby has even claimed, “Americans are in serious intellectual trouble.” Fortunately, there are a few things that we can do to combat this issue that will be touched upon later in this essay.
Within the last two decades, our social media has rapidly developed and it becomes one of the most influent types of social communication. Though its original purpose is to be a convenient way to converse distantly, it becomes multi-tasked in recent years which some notable Internet corporations such as Facebook, Tweeter create new applications that expand its purpose from talking only. In a way, it renovates the idea of entertainment.
The influence of rapidly growing social media, television, and the internet has taken the world by storm in recent years. Its fascinating development over the years is nothing short of remarkable when you take into account that 20 years ago, only 16 million people in the world were "online", compared to the 2 billion that roam on the internet now. Modern communications technology has now become so familiar and utterly banal, yet there is still this tingling sensation when one receives a text from a love interest on Facebook or WhatsApp. Human identity, the idea that defines each and every one of us, is on the verge of being radically defined by social media. This essay will provide a balanced outlook on the positive and negative effects that social media have had on the behaviour and thinking on humans. The topic is a very controversial one, but the purpose of this is to help readers formulate a view on whether the arguments in this essay benefit society in general, or whether they harm the well-being of the human brain and detach us from reality.
The social media is one of the most common means of communication and pretty much of knowing anything and everything around the world these days, and it is growing very rapidly. It changes and affects each person in a different way, or ways. Some may argue that social media has a bad influence on children and young adults, while most people see that the social media has a more positive effect on them than a negative one. Social media is basically the new way of keeping in touch with everything and everyone, and of even strengthening bonds between each other. This essay will argue that social media has improved communication between people, and has also improved the means of communication between them.
In addition, social media changed the way of living and the working level of many people like organizing vacations and researching for school and university projects. With attributes that may affect the way people interact online, social media open a new ways for many newspapers, magazines to publish their issues online to promote their ideas quickly and to let the people in contact with their news and to make more productivity and make more money. Also, they can listen to any type of music, reads books, story, purchase any product, buy clothe online...