Postman Review

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is an incredibly insightful book on how the media impacts our changing perception of the world. The book takes us step-by-step in developing a path from spoken, to written, to oral-based culture while providing imperative information about what lies beneath the messages that the media is sending out to us. Postman argues that the shift from a typographical-based culture to an image-based culture has been driven solely by technology. Not only does Postman argue that television has changed our perception of the world, but also how we behave due to these perceptions.

Postman blames most of this shift on America’s dependency upon television. However, it is not simply the dependency on television itself, but the entertainment that it provides. He states that “American television, in other words, is devoted entirely to supplying its audience with entertainment.” Seeing that television is the prime outlet for entertainment, it would also be the prime outlet for media. Postman attempts to convey that by exposing ourselves to the media for entertainment purposes, we are exposing ourselves to all kinds of information which shapes that way be think and behave.

Throughout the book, Postman supports his arguments through drawn out theoretical reasoning, however does not give nearly as many real-life experiences. In a review published on Curled Up With A Good Book, the author writes about Postman’s lack of real-life examples when discussing the ramifications of television. “Postman provides little in the way of real-world evidence that television has damaged America’s body politic. Such evidence arguably exists, but it is not examined. Instead, there are anecdotes about televised debates resulting in cosmetically powered elections, and largely philosophical arguments about whether television redefines religion.”

Although Postman makes a compelling argument about how the media has affected society, it does not necessarily apply to today’s society. Various sections of the book present theories that could be upheld today, despite the lack of research at the time that the book was written. Sarah Medor states that “Part of the problem is simply that Amusing Ourselves to Death was published in 1985, and serious studies on information issues were fewer and less developed than today. But in giving credence only to those studies which bolster his argument and dismissing all others, Postman proves nothing other than that television does have some effect on viewers, which he considers negative.”

In conclusion, I believe that this book can definitely make a cultural impact upon anyone that reads it. Postman not only presents valid points and theories, but also provides the readers with a view of how the media affects them personally. It is simple to observe that this book is written from a biased standpoint, at times making it difficult to completely comprehend the thought process behind the theories. However, this biased view of television and the media provides perfect insight as to how much we really are affected by what we watch without even realizing it.