Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman

George Orwell: 1984

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

The Medium is the Metaphor

Words VS. Images

● Political● Journalists● Advertise: JAPAN TOYOTA.

TOYOTA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUWJ9TSThuA

“DISPENSE WITH A HORSE. THE WINTON MOTOR CARRIAGE.”

《Scientific American》 08.13.1898

Q: In America, the least amusing people are its professional entertainers?

“It’s a face-judging world.”● Air Stewardess.

the Medium is the Message.—— Marshall McLuhan

● Word-centered to Image-centered.

● Speech: Chinese VS. English.

● “our LANGUAGE are our MEDIA. our MEDIA are our METAPHORS. our METAPHORS create the content of our culture.”

Amusing Ourselves To Death

Chapter 2: Media as

Epistemology

According to Postman, particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Give one word that describes the type of communication for the following modes:

ORAL

TV

PRINT Internet/Mobile/Tabs

A book demands of you to stay immobile, go past aesthetic distraction and assume detachment and objectivity. Demands of you to think.

Do visuals/video make us feel as opposed to think?

Is it correct to think of human intelligence to be composed of intellect and not emotion?

If forms determine nature of content, what do we make of the new forms of communication like mobiles and tablets?

Do these medium allow to engage with both intellect and emotion?

Amusing Ourselves To Death

Chapter 3: Typography of America

19th century - age of reason

America’s Founding Fathers intellectuals.

Benjamin Franklin

“father” of printing press

Resonance

Power of a phrase, a book, a character, or a history to unify and invest with meaning a variety of attitudes or experiences.

Every medium of communication, has resonance (resonance=metaphor writ large)

A medium has ability to grow out of its original and limited context.

Postman talks about bias of a medium over a culture - what bias does internet/TV/Print/Oral have on our culture?

If Press is a structure for discourse (Marx),can

that be said for the internet in today’s age?

Can only press create serious and rational public

conversation?

Amusing Ourselves To Death

Chapter 4: The Typographic Mind

A Text Centered Culture

Lincoln Douglas Debates

•I desire to address myself to your judgment, your understanding, and

your conscienceless, not your enthusiasm.

•Are we hiding our lack of analytic thought in enthusiasm today?

Advertising 1704-1704 first paid advertising in

Newspaper

-At Oysterbay, on Long Island in the Province of N. York. There is a very

good Fulling-Mill, to be Let or Sold, as also a plantation, having on it a large

new Brick house….

- Intended to appeal to understanding, not to passions

1890’s SlogansFirst one:

You push the button, we do the rest.

Guess which brand..?

1970’s1970 Ivory Soap Jingle

-Notice anything different?

Chapter 5: The Peek-A-Boo World

•Telegraph

•Photography

•The Graphic Revolution

•“For many Americans, seeing, not reading became the basis for

believing.”

Where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives,

now they had to invent contexts in which otherwise

useless information might be put to some apparent use.