Amusing_Ourselves_To_Death

Amusing Ourselves To Death In Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman declares “we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.” The decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television have generated a great media metaphor shift in America, with the result that much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. “Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice.” The time period from the early-eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century is identified by Postman as the Age of Exposition. During this period the printing press governed discourse in America. As he believes the form in which ideas are expressed affects what those ideas will be, discourse was generally coherent, serious and rational; unlike the shriveled and absurd discourse generated by television. Postman argues that typography amplified many of the characteristics we associate with mature discourse: “a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response.” Postman points television, postman, discourse, world, telegraph, image, education, age, photograph, new, information, argues, america, watch, public, people, news, much, media, longer, large, knowing, century, without, upon, until, typography, together, time, staged, show, satisfying, result, problem, possibility