Media Takeover and Postman

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death has had a far greater impact upon me than did Carr. Perhaps this is because his arguments are more concrete, or that his Huxley-esque vision for the future is much more potent since it was written in the 1980's. Either way, his poignant book has been on my mind for days since I first picked it up. He was absolutely right when he said that the media, from religion to politics to even just the news of the day, is forced to take on an amusing role. This has increased ten-fold since the assimilation of the internet into our culture. This has caused the normally-devastating state of our world to be taken in a light manner. And, as Postman says at the top of page 108, "Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?" Television, and more recently the internet, have become harbingers of amusement, causing us to undermine what information truly is. The worst part: There really is no way to stop this media takeover. The entertainment media phenomenon has snowballed uncontrollably, so that there is no way to stop it. Not that the majority of us would want to; we are simply too amused. The best that Postman can offer us, and the one that almost seems to be already in place, is putting down television and the internet in the classroom. However, there is almost no way to get acceptable grades by avoiding the internet. For example, this blog is all done online. How can we, as a society, break the cycle, and make information about the content instead of the medium?

Postman has driven home the fact that we accept ignorance as our information, which, I presume, is also the premise of Brave New World. With his novel read and absorbed, I am ready to read the final book with our society - and our future - in mind.