Since intelligence is primarily defined as one’s capacity to grasp the truth of things, it follows that what a culture means by intelligence is derived from the character of its important forms of communication. “As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.” Truth is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented. Each culture conceives of it as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant. The truth must be presented in a certain clothing or it’s not acknowledged. The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. “We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.” The problem is when television presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations: Postman raises no objection to television’s junk, rather it’s the best part of TV. Languages are our media, the metaphors that create the content of our culture. We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. Communication on television is largely done in images, not words. Each medium creates a unique mode of communication by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation.”Īlthough culture is a creation of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication. The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. “This idea – that there is a content called “the news of the day” – was entirely created by the telegraph (and since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. New technology introduced new forms of communication: As a result, we as people are on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. Politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business. America favors all those who possess both a talent and a format to amuse. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” The Medium Is the Metaphor Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.Īs Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

Postman believes that the communication inspired by television has turned our world into a more Huxleyan one. Aldous Huxley, who in “ Brave New World” depicted a population too amused by distractions – entertainment, leisure, and laughter – to realize that they had been made powerless.George Orwell, who in “ 1984” warned about a tyrannical state that would ban information to keep the public powerless.Written in 1985, it focuses on how television has negatively affected the level of public communication in contemporary America but it’s even more relevant today in the internet era. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman shows how the most popular media of a time in history shapes the discourse of the world. Amusing Ourselves to Death Short Summary.

Neil postman amusing ourselves to death