While reading my summaries for Amusing Ourselves to Death, I found it interesting at how accurate and relevant many of the topics Postman points out in his book are today. Many Americans today have become consumed with technology and don't seem to be able to detach themselves from it. For example, a quote that stood out to me while reading was when Postman states ,""How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?...Most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action." (pg. 68). Postman defines his sense of decontextualized information, both in terms of its definitions and its potential to harm us. He suggests that while we feel connected to the information of the "news of the day" because it inspires opinions from us, we are nevertheless unaffected by it.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading Amusing Ourselves to Death even though it was hard to get interested by it at first. I procrastinated reading it for a long time because when I read the first few pages I was bored by it sadly. In addition, while reading the first couple of chapters I was uninterested by it and found it hard to focus and keep reading. But once I made it further into the book I found it eye-opening in a way and realized how accurate some of Postman's claims were. The way Postman writes is amazing and I would definitely recommend it to others.
In my opinion, Amusing Ourselves to Death was a great book and very interesting as well. It expanded my point of view on television and the access to the Internet. However, I'm not really a television fan anyway because everything on it has just gotten so boring and now I just use movie apps or the very popular 'Netflix'. A lot of the claims he wrote about were very relatable. For example, he emphasized how campaign elections weren't about the persons true personality but rather their looks and their entertaining side. Basically, our world has become so consumed by the Internet and technology , that the true tradition and culture of things are gone.
ReplyDeleteI personally agree with you because to me reading that book was like pulling teeth. I didn't like how every chapter almost talked about a completely different subject every time. which lead to my confusion about some of the parts in the book. I personally would have not have chose to read that book just for the fun of it, but i guess its good that things in the book were some what retable to.
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