Amusing Ourselves to Death

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman. Audiobook from Internet Archive. Available here.

I have not read as much as I would have liked this semester because of a large workload at school. But I was grateful when my wife pointed out this audiobook, which I was able to download to my iPod and listen to while I biked to school. The irony of listening to this book in audiobook format while commuting did not escape me. I found Postman's 1985 classic to be well-written and convincing in its thesis. The book left me with a lot to think about; even more importantly, I felt a desire to change in my own life. The last book that left me so impressed was Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I appreciate authors who are able to elucidate poorly understood yet integral assumptions upon which modern society is based.

Postman's central thesis is that the form of media matters. The mode of information transmission necessarily constrains and informs the content. In this context, television and print promote two different means to access and understand knowledge with two very different outcomes. Print-based media is structured so as to promote a rationalist, sequential, nuanced, and abstract form of discourse. Television, in contrast, is image based and thus is suited for a different type of discourse. Images by their nature are fleeting and frequently only tangentially connected. Nuance is lost as the length of discussion is necessarily curtailed and concepts difficult to depict may lose significance or authority. Public discourse based on television is thus denuded of substantive, complex, or abstract content that is at the foundation of the most pressing public policy issues.

The author acknowledges that television excels in one category however: entertainment. Amusing anecdotes, silly scenarios, and unrealistic situations need no context or background to be entertaining. The value of image-based media lies precisely in its ability to detach the viewers from present stress and complexity inherent in everyday life. Americans have certainly embraced television as entertainment but so have public figures. The result is that politics, religion, family life, and education have all been repackaged to be "entertaining," that is, to be conducive to image-based media. Television has thus fundamentally altered our epistemological foundation: knowledge is now based on what we see, not on what we think after nuanced reflection, discussion, and reading.

Many of the ideas in this book are not new but the well-structured format, skillful writing, and pertinent references lend the argument especial credence. In some places, I found Postman to be almost prophetic concerning the evolution of media into the 21st century. Postman would surely not be surprised to hear of the remarkable rise of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart; in the conclusion he writes:

Only through a deep and unfailing awareness of the structure and effects of information, through a demystification of media, is there any hope of our gaining some measure of control over television...the [solution] is to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate, religious thought, etc. I imagine such demonstrations would of necessity take the form of parodies.

Postman dismisses this "solution" as nonsensical and yet I think he aptly describes the inherent appeal of the Daily Show and other such programming.

I wonder however if Postman is not being a bit unfair towards new forms of media. Perhaps I am simply too saturated in modern media technologies to be fully convinced otherwise, but television and images can add in meaningful ways to public discourse by increasing awareness and reducing some forms of author biases for example. I wonder too how Postman's argument hold up in the internet age. Print media are enjoying a remarkable upswing, albeit in electronic form. And social networking is creating new sources of knowledge and discourse that transcend any publication medium. In my mind, if media constrains the message than policymakers and citizens will be keen to continue to experiment with media to find the best way to transmit their epistemological perspectives.

As Pollan taught me to be a more discriminating eater, Postman teaches me to be a more discerning media consumer. What sources do I view as authoritative and why? What is my information to action ratio? What is entertainment and what is knowledge? In today's world, being able to parse the onslaught of information and media in today's world is a crucial skill set. Postman provides an effective framework to do just that.