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 24
... moves from orality to writing to printing to televising , its ideas of truth move with it . Every philosophy is the philosophy of a stage of life , Nietzsche remarked . To which we might add that every epis- temology is the epistemology ...
... moves from orality to writing to printing to televising , its ideas of truth move with it . Every philosophy is the philosophy of a stage of life , Nietzsche remarked . To which we might add that every epis- temology is the epistemology ...
Page 64
... move people and merchandise across the continent . But until the 1840's , information could move only as fast as a human being could carry it ; to be precise , only as fast as a train could travel , which , to be even more precise ...
... move people and merchandise across the continent . But until the 1840's , information could move only as fast as a human being could carry it ; to be precise , only as fast as a train could travel , which , to be even more precise ...
Page 136
... moving pictures is experienced as hap- pening " now , " which is why we must be told in language that a videotape we are seeing was made months before . Moreover , like its forefather , the telegraph , television needs to move frag ...
... moving pictures is experienced as hap- pening " now , " which is why we must be told in language that a videotape we are seeing was made months before . Moreover , like its forefather , the telegraph , television needs to move frag ...
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