I have finished reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. As I was reading, I was partially reminded of the children’s game of telephone. One person thinks of a simple phrase and then whispers it into the next person’s ear. That person listens to the phrase and passes it on to the next person, and so on. The last person to hear the phrase says what they think they heard out loud. As you can imagine, the final phrase is often quite different from the original because words have been changed, added or lost through communication. This reminded me of how much America lost when television became an integral part of our lives. Books lost a lot of the importance they once had during what Postman calls “The Age of Exposition”. Voters lost their ability to separate a politician’s looks, personalities, and charisma from a politician’s political parties and foreign policy. Certain religions lost their sacredness when preachers’ TV shows became another form of entertainment. Hours of children’s lives were lost as TV was promoted and encouraged through the education system. In the end, because America treated television with the same kind of flippancy that an adult treats a child’s a game of telephone: harmless, amusing, and of no consequence, it allowed themselves to become ensnared in its entertaining trap.
This brings me to another point. As I was reading, I couldn’t
help but think how accurate Postman’s theories were and still are. It was almost
disturbing to see how fake and entertainment-centered our society has become. In
the end, I was left worrying about what could be done to solve this problem.
Although Postman offers a few solutions, even he does not seem very confident
that they could be effective. He offers as his most plausible solution using
the education system to inform the coming generations of the dangers of technology.
What does everyone think? Is it possible to reverse our addiction to
entertainment and reduce its prevalence in our society, or will America simply continue
to become the world that Aldous Huxley predicted it would become?
I think balance is the solution. Every person needs to find their balance between using technology and not using technology. Plus, technology is not bad, it is a good thing but sometimes we use it wrong. So everyone, find your balance.
ReplyDeleteI believe "finding your balance" is more simply said than done. How can we balance between need and want when we both need and want technology? I'm not saying it's impossible, but for the entire technology- surrounded population, its just implausible.
DeleteI agree with you Sharissa. Because it is so hard to find a balance we should strive to get closer and each step to the goal is an achievement.
ReplyDeleteHi Kaila. I like your interpretation of the telephone game. To answer your question I believe that America will continue to become the world Aldous Huxley predicted it would be. I believe this because new additions to technology are being made all the time. I don’t think there is a balance between using technology and not using it because we use it in our everyday lives. Instead of going to the store and purchasing a hard copy of a book we can simply download it onto our tablets. These technological advancements better our society.
ReplyDeleteWow, the telophone game is a great example to use :). Because of the media, everything televised has lost its importance, or content. I believe it could be possible for one to find a balance between the use of technology but it's actually very difficult because technology evelops our society.
ReplyDelete