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Sunday, July 13, 2014
The Clock
I am currently almost done with Amusing Ourselves To Death, but while I was reading the beginning of the book, I wrote some things down. One thing I found interesting was when Postman talked about clocks. He said that the clocks shaped everything around us. Postman used the clocks as a metaphor which I found pretty interesting. He believed that the clocks created the idea of "moment to moment." I never really thought of a clock being so technical, but Postman used his ideas and also hard vocabulary to show the greater background. There are plenty of thoughts that Postman talks about that are kind of hard to read, but while I continued to read, some of the ideas started to not be as complex for me. Some of the vocab that Postman used through out the book were also very hard to understand, but thankfully I had my mini dictionary next to me the whole time! AOTD might not be the most fun book to read, but I am learning about so many things that I would never think about.
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Let's stop and think for a minute. How often do you wonder, check, or ask what time it is? Since its inception, the clock defined a previously uncontested area of life: time. Time had an actual meaning thanks to the clock, and people now reference to the clock as often as they reference to TV. Postman chose an excellent metaphor to compare television to.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Josh that the clock is a solid metaphor to use to television when discussing how different technologies can change the way we look at certain subjects. When I was reading about the clock metaphor in the beginning, I was reminded of myself and my constant fixation with time since I strive to be a punctual person. Postman deconstruction of the clock's basic principles into technicalities helped me visualize technologies' vital role in shaping the way we live as the television has done for the way we process, retain, and apply information to ourselves and the real world.
ReplyDeleteSpoiler Alert: Nicholas Carr also argues a similar point with the internet by also referencing the clock in The Shallows. He argues that the clock's "moment by moment" (Postman's thought) concept began to stress a mental work progress involving division and measurement propelled us to achieve many advances. The meaning that the clock has put on our lives, like Josh said, is so great that without it, our lives would be thrown into a whirlwind if it happened to disappear one day.