Book Review: Amusing Ourselves to Death - Neil Postman

I had to read this book for college as part of my Communication Principles subject. At first, the title was somewhat of an irony. The first half of the book was quite boring. As I was thinking about what I'd put in this book review (an edited version of which I will have to hand in formally), I considered assigning it to the genre I like to call "constipated anglican waffle". The book, however, sufficiently redeems itself. The first section is devoted to a thorough examination of the relationship between cultural conversations and the media used to conduct them. Postman makes observations as to the context within which a culture communicates and the shape of the society which results. Focusing predominantly on American history, Postman examines in detail the transition from the local community, where the written word was champion as the primary mode for 'public discourse', through to the emergence of the 'global village', which began with the invention of the telegraph and evolved towards television. As it was written in 1985, it does not even begin to touch on the application of Postman's ideas to the internet. However, this is a logical extension of his argument and one worth considering once one has read through his ideas. Postman's primary contention through his largely comparitive discussion, is that a print-based culture is more intelligent than a television-based one. He examines in detail the way in which the printed word facilitates the discovery of truth through the critical analysis of ideas. This, he says, better facilitates education and informed opinion. By comparison, Postman believes that the nature of television is one which, simply by association, encourages education, politics and religion to lose their core messages and assimilate into the entertainment landscape on the box. Refreshingly, Postman does not criticise television for being entertaining. Rather, he criticises our society for expecting it to be anything but entertainment. His underlying concern is that our culture will willingly sacrifice its capacity for intelligent thought for the illusion that television keeps us informed. The book does not make for the most thrilling read, which is probably a good thing from the author's perspective, seeing that Postman proclaims entertainment to be the death of culture. The fact that you and I both have some expectation that a book will be entertaining, probably actually strengthens his argument to an extent. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in thinking about how the Christian faith is communicated within our culture, particularly through the use of print and electronic media, simply because I have never seen these quite relevant ideas presented (or even discussed) in any other place. You can download the MPEG of this blog post... ...just kidding!