Amusing Ourselves to Death

I would say Postman’s concluding claim in this chapter is that “forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms” (6). In other words, the way we communicate with each other limits the type of content that can communicated.

I strongly agree with this brilliant point mainly because of the points he backs it up with. Postman goes on to explain this by providing examples of the Indians who communicate with smoke signals. The smoke signals were their way of long distance communication and they could not have philosophical arguments simply because the “form excludes the content” (7). The limitations of that form affected what could be communicated through it. Another example Postman shows is of a President Taft and how his “grossness” would cause him to not get elected in the present day even though his political arguments and policies are sound. “For on television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to say that television gives us a conversation in images, not words […] television demands a different kind of content from other media[…] Its form works against the content” (7). Postman explains that President Taft would not be elected because of his visual appearance but in a world without television he was elected because his political arguments were more important than appearance at the time. Postman shows that the form of discourse can limit or dictate the content.

 I would say his argument still stays true to this day. “Television gives us a conversation in images, not words” (7) is still true, but also applies to the Internet. I would say the Internet has surpassed television as the new medium and now has the primary influence on the formation of the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations. Images are all over the Internet and they have become (in my opinion) the new medium in which we enforce our understanding of reality. We use images everyday to contribute to our perception of reality. We perceive things visually we have never seen through looking at images. You can only visually perceive things by both going to a place and experiencing it yourself or by just looking an image of the thing. The photo is a metaphor of the actual thing. Therefore “the medium is the metaphor”.

Postman also stresses a big deal about the theme of entertainment.  Postman says “all public discourse increasingly take the form of entertainment” (3) and “the result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (4). He suggests American Culture is best symbolized by Las Vegas “a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment” (3). I think he is right because nowadays what sells is what’s entertaining or dramatic. He also shows that this new form of discourse is affecting us in ways that we do not even realize. Postman is getting at the idea that everyone is concerned with appearance and entertainment above all else because of this new medium of images.  The medium is dictating the content of the culture and is causing adverse effects that people aren't even noticing.