Hello everyone I have just recently finished reading the
book Amusing Ourselves to Death and
although it is nothing like what I have ever read before, I found it very interesting. At
first it was a little difficult to understand because of the vocabulary, but it
later became easier. One of the chapters that got me thinking was chapter four,
The Typographic Mind. Postman refers
to the Lincoln- Douglas debates and how people were able to listen to them for
hours because the audience had previous knowledge about the topic being spoken,
and the speeches were written in advance with thought. Today, in our society
people wouldn’t be able to focus on anything for too long without getting bored
or distracted. Postman also says that the Age of Exposition is being replaced
by the Age of Show Business and I find this entirely true because people no longer
want to use their heads to think, they just want to be entertained.
Another point that I want to address is in chapter nine, Reach Out and Elect Someone. Postman discusses the way candidates use television to make their image look better to voters, so that they can be elected. He says it is impossible to tell who is the better candidate with television. This has definitely persuaded me to be careful when I get old enough to vote because I wouldn’t want to make a mistake in my vote because of a commercial or show that the candidate was on. Overall, I have really enjoyed reading this book and it makes me wonder what the world will be like later on when technology advances even more. This book was published in 1985 and if television was a problem back then I can’t imagine what Postman would think of America now.
-Jocelyne Vasquez
Another point that I want to address is in chapter nine, Reach Out and Elect Someone. Postman discusses the way candidates use television to make their image look better to voters, so that they can be elected. He says it is impossible to tell who is the better candidate with television. This has definitely persuaded me to be careful when I get old enough to vote because I wouldn’t want to make a mistake in my vote because of a commercial or show that the candidate was on. Overall, I have really enjoyed reading this book and it makes me wonder what the world will be like later on when technology advances even more. This book was published in 1985 and if television was a problem back then I can’t imagine what Postman would think of America now.
-Jocelyne Vasquez
I actually brought this topic up in a post if my own 'Now and Then'. I actually loved this chapter by far, because it shows that people nowadays have become so clingy and dependent on technology, and even when we've handicapped ourselves, some of us have the audacity to have huge complaints about doing something as simple as researching on the internet.
ReplyDeleteI was referring to Chapter 4
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