The late Neil Postman’s influential 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, is often referenced by today’s cultural observers of mass communication. I have come only lately to the book and have been reading recently. As many others have observed before me, Postman’s analysis has proven deeply prescient. It is fascinating to read a 25 year-old book that feels so utterly relevant to today’s electronic and internet culture. 

 

Focusing primarily on the corrosive effects of television on social discourse, Postman argues that the ubiquity of television marks a profound cultural revolution that goes beyond a change in the methods of communication. The shift from the printed word to electronic media is as significant to ways of thinking and knowing as the transition from oral communication to the written word was in ancient civilization. The central theme in Amusing Ourselves to Death is that as we undergo this “vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics,” it is not simply that we experience a change in the means of communication but a transformation in the way we think, and therefore in the content of culture. That is, the forms of communication shape what we know (or assume we know) and how we know it. Bringing Postman’s thesis forward to 2009, the internet, email, iPods, Google, PDA’s, in addition to the TV, not only help us communicate, they dictate what we see, how we see it, how we frame the world. 

 

“The point I am leading to …is that the concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned. … In saying this, I am not making a case for epistemological relativism. Some ways of truth-telling are better than others and therefore have a healthier influence on the cultures that adopt them. …And that is why it is necessary for me to drive hard the point that the weight assigned to any form of truth-telling is a function of the influence of media of communication. …As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to television, its ideas of truth move with it.”[i]

 

For Postman, the cumulative effects of this media revolution – one that has only picked up steam since the first publication of his book - are not positive. Indeed, he envisioned a Huxleyian future wherein we drown ourselves in a sea of trivial information and amusements.

 

Interestingly, just as I am engrossed in Postman’s work, I see the cover story for the current issue of Foreign Policy Magazine entitled, “How TV Can Still Save the World?” Author Charles Kenny argues that there are at least several salutary effects of the migration of television access into most of the third world, including reduced fertility rates in overpopulated impoverished regions, greater gender equality, and enhanced availability of news and information to children and students. To read this article go here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/19/revolution_in_a_box?page=full

 

To see additional commentary on this article click on Andy Crouch’s excellent blog “Culture Making” and check the entry for November 16, 2009: http://www.culture-making.com. Crouch is the author of the outstanding and widely acclaimed 2008 book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.

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