Neil Postman was born on March 8, 1931 and died October 5, 2003. He received a master's degree in 1955 and a doctorate of education degree in 1958, both from the Teachers College, Columbia University. He began teaching at New York University in 1959. In 1971, he founded a program in media ecology at the Steinhardt School of Education of NYU and in 1993 he was appointed a University Professor, and was chairman of the Department of Culture and Communication until 2002.
Postman wrote 18 books and more than 200 magazine and newspaper articles. Postman's best known book is Amusing Ourselves to Death, published in 1985. It explores the decline of the communication medium as television images have replaced the written word. Postman argues that television confounds serious issues with entertainment, demeaning and undermining political discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image. He also argues that television is not an effective way of providing education, as it provides only passive information transfer, rather than the interaction that he believes is necessary to maximize learning. He draws on the ideas of media theorist Marshall McLuhan to argue that different media are appropriate for different kinds of knowledge, and describes how oral, literate, and televisual cultures value and transfer information in different ways.
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.
I am in agreement with Neil Postman when he states television is having an overall negative effect on our society; it promotes short attention spans. For this argument, Postman uses the example of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Postman explains, audiences would "cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory" (Postman, 1985, p. 44). I don’t believe this concept to be entirely true in today's society.
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
3. Paul Strand was born in New York and attended the Ethical Culture School where his teacher was Lewis Hine.
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 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.
Postman bases his argument on the belief that public discourse in America, when governed by the epistemology of the printing press, was "generally coherent, serious, and rational" (16) because the reader was required to ingest, understand, and think about the logic of the author's arguments before coming to a verdict. In effect, intelligence in a print-based world "implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of concepts and generalizations" (26). However, with the emergence of television and its rapid ascendancy in our culture, Postman argues that discourse has become "shriveled and absurd" (16). TV, he says, assaults us with fleeting images and disconnected bits of information with no context except for the "pseudo-context" which is manufactured "to give fragmented and irrelevant information a seeming use" (76). In effect, TV demands a certain kind of content-the "medium is the message" in the words of Marshall McLuhan-that Postman believes is suitable to the world of show business and hostile to the print-based world of logical thinking (80). This is not to say that TV ignores important subjects such as current affairs, politics, religion, science, and e...
Throughout the span of the past few weeks I have traversed the globe, visiting several countries and regions, only to realize that although new methods develop, language as a way of expressing ones self has remained the most effective. Despite this fact, language still has its pitfalls. Neil Postman, in his essay “Defending Against the Indefensible,'; outlines seven concepts that can be used to aid a student in better understanding the language as a means of communication. He describes how modern teaching methods leave a student vulnerable to the “prejudices of their elders';, further stating that a good teacher must always be skeptical. He urges teachers of all subjects to break free from traditional teachings as well as “linguistical tyranny';
“Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman is a piece that focuses on the effects that technology has on public discourse and politics. He believes that the development of the television has habituated us to constantly needing to be entertained, which changes the way we take in information. It is no longer the substance that we value but rather the entertainment value. An important point that Postman evaluates in chapter 9 is that politics has become similar to show business. With politicians paying more attention to their image than political issues the integrity of modern politics can only be questioned. To update Postman’s arguments, although the television has allowed political figures to present the image their audience wants to see the internet has allowed for all aspects of one’s life to be accessible, which changes the way we view their credibility.
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.
In Typographical America Neil Postman loves the idea of everyone getting involved even uneducated people could react to the discussions.
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.
In Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, he claims that media, especially television, is having an adverse effect on human values and eroding critical thinking skills. Postman primarily focuses on the effect of television on politics and religion. He begins by presenting historical facts in the first part of the book, and then he continues to describe the effects of media in American life in the second part of the book. Postman believes that media has begun to control the human mind. Therefore, he argues that humans need to learn how to combat the negative effects of media. He also argues that humans need to control media before it completely takes over our lives. Postman presents a factually supported, but biased argument in which he views media to be a rival of American advancement.
Any act of conscious communication always true, in varying degrees, two fundamental objectives. One is to inform, instruct and describe, and the other is to entertain or occupy. The products of the mass communication industry made that mandate the particularity that are targeted to a wide receiver, whose acceptance is intended to conquer. The intent of the act is expressed with the term broadcast (spread through mass media), which once meant to sow broadcast the farmland. The cinema, especially the US, is the great communication industry of the twentieth century. Although in recent decades seems to have given primacy to television, the information, education and entertainment on Western culture influence is undeniable.
Postman wrote three different commandments emphasizing why television debilitates the rules that are applied I schools, and colleges. These three commandments are “Thou shalt have no prerequisites” which he explains as not needing any previous education nor continuity to watch a show, also a viewer can watch when ever they desire to do so without punishments being implied if they do miss an episode. The second commandment is “Thou shalt induce perplexity” which postman defines as a learning that does not remember or cares for the content of the show. And the last commandment is “ Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt” which means that as long as the content in television is placed in a theatrical manner in which music has to be playing in the background, it has to be written as a story, and it has to include drama, action, or emotions then television will never be educational instead just way of
As an engaging cultural critic, professor at New York University, and author of numerous books on the themes of education and technology, Neil Postman is well positioned to comment on the relation of technology to culture. The relation as he sees it is one in which culture is subservient to and controlled by both invisible (I.Q. scores, statistics, polling techniques) and visible (television, computers, automobiles) technologies. Technology, Postman admits, is a friend but mostly it is a dangerous enemy that intrudes into a culture, changing everything, while destroying the vital sources of our humanity.