Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show BusinessTelevision has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs. In this eloquent, persuasive book, Neil Postman alerts us to the real and present dangers of this state of affairs, and offers compelling suggestions as to how to withstand the media onslaught. Before we hand over politics, education, religion, and journalism to the show business demands of the television age, we must recognize the ways in which the media shape our lives and the ways we can, in turn, shape them to serve out highest goals. |
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Page 18
... medium of communication , I am claiming , has resonance , for resonance is metaphor writ large . Whatever the original and limited context of its use may have been , a medium has the power to fly far beyond that context into new and ...
... medium of communication , I am claiming , has resonance , for resonance is metaphor writ large . Whatever the original and limited context of its use may have been , a medium has the power to fly far beyond that context into new and ...
Page 84
... medium . We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind . Like the brain , a technology is a physical apparatus . Like the mind , a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put . A technology becomes a ...
... medium . We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is to the mind . Like the brain , a technology is a physical apparatus . Like the mind , a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put . A technology becomes a ...
Page 136
... medium of serious public discourse . A book is all his- tory . Everything about it takes one back in time — from the way it is produced to its linear mode of exposition to the fact that the past tense is its most comfortable form of ...
... medium of serious public discourse . A book is all his- tory . Everything about it takes one back in time — from the way it is produced to its linear mode of exposition to the fact that the past tense is its most comfortable form of ...
Contents
The Medium Is the Metaphor | 3 |
Media as Epistemology | 16 |
Typographic America | 30 |
Copyright | |
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advertising Aldous Huxley America amusing argument audience become believe Billy Graham called celebrities Charles Finney claims classroom coherent communication conversation course created culture Diff'rent Strokes Douglas eighteenth entertainment epistemology example exposition fact Frye Huxley idea implied intellectual irrelevant Jerry Falwell Jimmy Swaggart language learning Lincoln-Douglas debates literacy Marshall McLuhan matter means medium ment merely metaphor Mimi mind movie nature newscaster newspaper nineteenth century oral Orwell Pat Robertson photograph play preachers President printed word printing press problem public discourse question radio rational readers reason religion religious Reverend Robert Schuller rock music sense serious Sesame Street show business sion social speech story symbolic tele telegraph television commercial television program television screen television show television's thing tion tradition truth typographic viewers visual Walter Ong watch writing written word York