Neil Postman's “Amusing Ourselves to Death”

Introduction

Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman's composition touches two extreme and opposing prophecies, that of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Key highlights if his books remains the Orwellian warning of severe oppression and government control that is brought out by the technology of watch everyone anywhere. The Huxleyian warning warns that human will oppress themselves, So much information and opportunities will be available to civilians that they will be “drowned in a sea of irrelevance”. Postman asserts that the symptoms of the Huxleyian prophecy can be seen in the nineteenth and twentieth century. He, through his examination of the effects of the electronic media, highlights the current characteristics in our culture resembling to Huxley's predictions.

Discussion

In the book, Postman asserts that television forms a new form of epistemology and this nature of the new form of knowledge, he claims, creates a comparatively less intelligent culture. He further argues that people modified to this culture often assume everything around them as amusement while losing the sense of importance and historical context of the knowledge (Muscatine et al 1991, 766-769). Postman devotes half of the book in validating his argument and illustrates how a communication medium shapes culture and the definition of intelligence while in the later part of the book, he examines and contrasts the television age with the typographic age. He also points out the modified definition of intelligence and the new form of culture that develops that is created by television and there the new form of acquiring knowledge is best for human thought (Riley 2011, 18-21).

Postman at first emphasizes that the medium is the message as believed by Marshal Mcluhan while the limitations and capabilities of the method employed for public discourse effects how people interact with each other. To elaborate, typographic cultures were different from oral based mainly in their thinking patterns. Beowulf, to take an example, initiates from oral culture which is equipped with mnemonics, the accounts of fighting with evil beasts cannot be drawn out in the sequence of events and neither has it invited questions and analytical thoughts. It is primarily meant to appeal the memory of other while the elaborate accounts are reflected to initiate more elaborate accounts about once own capabilities. They focus to being remembered through tales and accounts which reflects the correlation of their oral mode of communication with their cultural (Muscatine et al 1991, 766-769). Typography, whereas, enable prominence which implies that once something is written down, it remains and carries on in the society's consciousness which in turn, allows, penetration, analysis and critics on the information. Also, it creates a context which is not possible otherwise while new methodologies are created and ideas are combined upon each other and opens portals for further studies. Political or religious discussion does not simply reflect that the context is a random speech and instead, assumes that the participants are equipped with previous studies and knowledge of the topic that's put into discussion. Accordingly, history ...