Here’s a brief not well-worked over essay I wrote just now… it’s about that book I quoted from a few posts ago, "Amusing Ourselves to Death."
Aquaducts can carry water, but not mud or electricity. Dump trucks can transport mud, but while they might be able to carry water as well, they cannot do so nearly as efficiently as aquaducts. Postman makes the case that different media or mediums (for example speech, typography, television) in a culture affect what he terms ‘public discourse.’ Public Discourse is essentially the culture-wide discussion, dwelling upon, and debating of ideas, so Postman argues that the main media of communication that a culture uses will define the ideas that can be discussed.
While the fact that aquaducts can carry water and not mud seems fairly obvious, it is far less obvious in my own mind that TV, the media on which Postman centers his discussion, can communicate some ideas while having severe limitations communicating others. Television carries entertainment, Postman says, and backs this up with several valid reasons. When spiritual, religious, political, social, or other ideas that are very serious in nature are attempted at being conveyed through the medium of television, which is one of entertainment, these things must become watered down, chopped up, cooked down before they can be viewed as entertainment. This is desensitization at its very worst. Because serious ideas are distorted by the main media of a culture into entertainment, the general public conception of these things, the ‘public discourse’ if you will, becomes one of triviality. For that is what entertainment is: trivial. It does not affect our lives practically, besides eating up time, when we seek entertainment in ideas and institutions that are meant to be practical in influencing the way we live, think, walk, talk.
I very much appreciated Postman’s words and insight on TV and media and how they affect public discourse. I’m very much fascinated by the idea that different media can communicate different things and not others… it makes me wonder about the internet and what sort of a media it’s turning out to be. Granted, Postman’s discussion about American society heading down irresistibly towards the depths of a TV saturated culture are somewhat outdated in that society is no longer heading in that direction. But I still see value in his discussion of media in general and the huge affect they have on culture and public discourse. It is a good thing to be aware of what sorts of things shape our minds and how they work and what sorts of affects they have on our thinking and ability to process and percieve.
It’s been very enlightening reading ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. I’ve really enjoyed it, it’s made me think over the way our culture perceives news/politics/weather etc.
Yes, it certainly has for me too