Customer Reviews

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Paperback)

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Postman's book is a harsh diatribe against the television industry and its effects on intellectual discourse in the United States. Postman argues that television, especially when compared to the written word, cannot foster deep, rational thought in its viewers, because it requires absolute passivity from them. Television can only be about entertainment, and its cultural dominance, Postman argues, has had negative effects on education, politics, and religion.

The first half the book dedicated to Postman's updating of the famous Marshall McLuhan postulate, "the medium is the message." Postman agrees, but takes it even further, stating in chapter one that "the medium is the metaphor." What he means by this is that our language -- how we communicate -- is only a metaphor for reality. We describe as best as we can what we see and know, but our method of communication circumscribes how and what we can actually communicate. Postman argues that whichever mode of communication we chose to communicate with -- be it oral, written, or televisual -- each comes with its own set of limitations. That is to say, "the form excludes the content." Some ideas simply can't be expressed by certain forms, which should be obvious to anybody who has tried to write a sarcastic email without the appropriate smiley face at the end.

Postman then guides the reader through a history of communication, laying out eras where oral, print, or visual communicative forms were culturally dominant. For Postman, the print era (or "age of typography"), which he dates roughly from the Reformation to the 19th century, is when rational argument reached its pinnacle. The form of the written word, Postman argues, requires the marshalling of evidence and the presentation of that evidence in a logical order on behalf of the writer, and patience and discernment on the part of the reader. Only in the printed word could complicated truths be clearly and rationally conveyed. During the 19th century, when print had reached hegemony in communications, rational thought was most most valued. A striking example that Postman provides is the Lincoln-Douglas debates. While these were certainly public spectacles (usually held at state or county faires), Postman presents them as if they were dueling long-form essays. In one particular debate (Peoria, October 16, 1854), Stephen Douglas went first for three hours, after which Lincoln suggested everyone go home to have dinner and come back in the evening. They did, and when they returned they were treated to another four hours of oratory, starting with Lincoln's rebuttal of Douglas. This sounds more like a paper session at an academic conference than a political debate, which is Postman's point exactly. Lincoln and Douglas did in fact write their speeches out, to make sure they made sense, though neither man was insensitive to audience response. In this era -- the era defined by typography as the leading communicative form -- major public figures, be they politicians, preachers, or activists, were expected to be able to make a long, rational, public argument, and the people were willing to listen to it. They weren't bored into a catatonic state by long speeches at all, Postman says, but rather interacted with the orators to encourage them, or challenge them to stay on point.

In the modern (television) age, however, things are different. Following the maxim "the form excludes the content," political discourse is no longer about rational argument, says Postman, but about entertainment and appearance. People get bored if television images are too static, so change has to happen, and frequently. There's no time to lay out a rational argument, but no matter, the passive audience doesn't want long, convoluted logic anyway. Television makes its viewers demand constant stimuli, so if things take too long, people just tune out. Debates rarely last even 90 minutes (poor Stephen Douglas), and politicos are lucky to get five minutes on a particular question. Not that they're expected to give a logical answer, anyway. In fact, they can repeat catchphrases as much as they want ("lockbox!" "it's hard work!") as long as they don't look bored (Bush 1992), condescending (Gore 2000), or annoyed (Bush 2004). Who really remembers what was said at the debates in the last presidential campaign anyway? Indeed, did those commenting on the debates immediately following ever really analyze what was being said? In rare cases, such as on PBS, you'd get issue analysis, but for the most part television political commentary was limited to "how did the candidate come across to voters?" "Did he appear honest? Likeable?" Postman says that we're no longer in the Age of Typography, but rather in the Age of Show Business. Television's rules control how we communicate today, even if we aren't on television ourselves.

Take, for example, religion. Postman spends a chapter on religious discourse in the modern era, basically laying into television preachers. Postman (who was Jewish) found some televangelists intelligent, others insulting and emotionally manipulative, but, above everything else, they were all entertainers. There was very little theological depth compared to say, Jonathan Edwards or even Charles Finney. Postman comes to two conclusions about religion on television:

The first is that on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. Everything that makes religion a historic, profound, and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as a second banana. The second conclusion is that this fact has more to do with the bias of television than with the deficiencies of these electronic preachers...


The point is that in the Age of Show Business, nothing escapes becoming entertainment. Postman reserves special scorn for the way education and news are handled by television. The news chapter is specially informative. Our news programs (even the "serious" news shows), he says, are basically entertainment, because they have music introducing ideas and pretty people ("talking hairdos") telling the stories. News items are stripped from local context, commodified, and given to the viewer in bit-sized chunks, separated by the "now.... this!" phenomenon, which serves to make the viewer dismiss it all as meaningless candy he or she can do nothing about. The "now... this!" phenomenon can be tried on any news broadcast. Tonight, for example, and update on the Iraq will be followed by ("now.... this!") Britney Spears' latest escapades. Postman says this serves to reduce it all to meaningless trivia.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is definitely a polemic. Postman starts off the book with a comparision of George Orwell's 1984 with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, stating that the point of his book is exploring the possibility that Huxley's dystopia was correct. Unlike 1984, where people are controlled by violence and pain, Huxley presented a world where people are controlled by giving them every pleasure they want. For Postman, television is the device that controls us by entertainment and pleasure. Is Postman provocative? You bet. But he does raise important questions about our uncritical acceptance of what we see on television, and our easy adoption of any new technology that comes down the pipe. Amusing Ourselves is a book that should be read and discussed by as many people as possible.

"In watching American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw's remark on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read." John Ackermann

Neil Postman in his book,'Amusing Ourselves To Death', looks at the impact of television culture on the way we live our lives, understand our present and future and how we gather our information. We need to understand the effects of living in a television society. As he says "We are in danger of creating a trivial culture that will spawn a race of people who adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." Once we are a television society, we have lost control. We can attempt to control television's influence when we understand the dangers. Neil Postman suggests that Americans ask 'what we are laughing about and why we have stopped thinking.' We have all heard the phrase, The Dumbing of America.

Roger Waters, of 'Pink Floyd' read Postman's book, and he was so taken with the message that one of the best CD's of this era was written. The song 'Amused To Death" tells us the story.

The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry
Down to the very last breath
Bartender what is wrong with me
Why I am so out of breath
The captain said excuse me ma'am
This species has amused itself to death
Amused itself to death
Amused itself to death"

Ackerman tells us that "Television has altered the meaning of "being informed' by giving us disinformation. Disinformation means misleading information;misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information. Information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads us away from knowing. The television industry did not deliberately set out to misinform us, but when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the result."

Over the past fifty years since the advent of television, we have allowed conversation and communication to become trivial, and to lead into entertainment. TV is a medium of entertainment. TV is a series of programmed images and pictures. Unlike a book we do not have to concentrate to obtain the meaning of a picture. This is the mechanism by which TV can make any subject meaningless and trivial. It is possible to "amuse one's self to death", considering that the first thing to go will be our vision of reality and to comment intelligently. And this is why Roger Waters CD "Amused to Death" had the power to unleash our subconscious. We are living the album. We are all slowly amusing ourselves to death. We are entertaining ourselves into a stupor. The best things on television is junk, and no one is threatened by it. We do not measure a culture by its output of junk, but by what we claim as significant.

I would think that several minutes of murder and violence would be enough for many sleepless nights. We watch the news because we know that the 'news' is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to speak. Everything about a news show tells us this; the good looking newscasters, their pleasant banter, the music that opens and closes the show, the film footage, the humorous commercials. These suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for crying. A news show, is a format for entertainment, not for education or reflection. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. But everyone goes to television for all these things, which is why television plays so powerfully throughout our land. Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Neil Postman says, "For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage, but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada."

We know that no matter how grave news may appear, we soon shall see commercials that will devalue the importance of the news. This is a key element of news and that allows us to believe that television news is not designed as a serious form of public communication. Our teenagers in particular are taught to believe that television is entertainment, so that the nightly newscast should not be taken as a serious responsibility.

This past political season is a prime example of the myriad of issues that have not been examined, but the entertainment value of the candidates has been examined ad nauseam. One reason why the political contest starts as soon as the President is sworn into office. What have we become, why are we laughing, the Dumbing of America is here.


Highly, Highly Recommended. prisrob 06-14-08

It seems unlikely that a book labeled "Current Affairs" could have a shelf life of more than a few years. It seems preposterous that a book dealing with television and referring to Dallas and Dynasty could have anything to see twenty two years after being published. Yet Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, now in it's "20th Anniversary Edition" continues to be read and studied and to hold influence. Even today it is used as required reading in many high school and college level courses. Though written by a man who made no claim to Christianity, few modern books written by an unbeliever have been more widely read and quoted by Christians. It truly is a remarkable little book.

Postman had that rarely quality of being able to see behind a fad, behind what was late and great. He saw the significance of the rise of the image and the fall of the word, the rise of amusement and the decline of discourse. He saw that television would soon saturate every area of our lives and taint the way we understand politics, religion, education and every other area of importance. As we now transition from a television-based culture to a computer-based culture the image remains central. Perhaps we have already amused ourselves past the point of no easy return. Television is remarkably effective at doing what it does best--entertaining. Postman had no argument with television is a tool of entertainment. In fact, the best things on television are its junk and no one is seriously threatened by this. Where television fails is in attempting to do the more serious work that has traditionally been carried by the written word.

Postman makes it his goal in this book to make the epistemology of television visible, demonstrating that television's way of knowing is hostile to typography's way of knowing, and not only that, but it is inferior to it. "Serious television" is a contradiction in terms for television speaks only in the voice of entertainment, never of serious, weighty, discourse--the kind of discourse that is essential to politics, religion and education. Television's influence has been relentless, transforming our culture so that every area is now considered a venue for entertainment.

Electronic media, led by television but being superseded by the computer, has changed the way we view the world and the way we carry on any kind of public discourse. Gone are the days when content was of overwhelming importance. Instead we deal with sound bites, with discordant images torn from any kind of context, and with style when in former days we relied on substance. Politicians win and lose election campaigns not on the basis of what they say, but on the basis of how they look when they say it.

Throughout the book is an interesting interplay between Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984. In the latter an oppressive regime dominates the world while in the former the people allow themselves to be overcome by levity, by entertainment and by pleasure so that they have no need of an oppressive regime. They were controlled by their amusements. Huxley, Postman argues, had it right. And I would tend to agree.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is a good read, a disturbing read, a thought-provoking read and, dare I say it, a must-read. It deserves its status as a classic and, though already two decades out of date, it is as timely as ever.

As anyone who follows my reviews likely knows, I am a big fan of George Orwell and, though I've read Huxley's Brave New World, it never burrowed its way into my mind the way 1984 did. Recently, however, a colleague of mine was teaching both novels in comparison, and used the forward to Amusing Ourselves to Death as an inspiration. Somehow, I had never heard of this book, but I was so interested by my colleague's use of bits and pieces of it, that I decided I needed to read it. I'm only sorry that it took so long for me to find out about Postman's work. This book is amazingly good.

There are so many excellent things here that I don't think I can really summarize effectively. Here are a few things that remain stuck in my mind: the difference between the typographic mind and the television mind. Postman foretold critically what we are now seeing physiologically--that modern media has changed the way we think. (See Prensky's work for applications to the rising of computers and gaming.) Groundlings could stand for 3 - 4 hours watching a Shakespearean play. Citizens could spend 6 - 8 hours listening to Lincoln and Douglas debate issues for a Senate seat. Today, even our most "well-read" intellectual would find such things bordering on the intolerable. Our minds simply are trained to handle such things anymore.

In place of debate, we have talking points, though Postman doesn't use this term. But when he describes the televised "debate" over the then-controversial TV movie The Day After, which I remember but had never considered as critically as Postman, he begins to show that TV simply doesn't allow for true debate by its nature. Television makes it nearly impossible for real engagement between people and extended discussion of issues.

Instead, we are left with "news" that isn't news as all. It is either an entertainment or it is a filler with no direct impact on our lives, or both. Postman has a fascinating discussion of how this new form of "news" arose with the arrival of the telegraph and has exploded in the world of television. He shows how we have become inundated by "flashes" of things that have no real impact on our lives and make us aware of things we can do little or nothing about: famines, floods, foreign elections, distant wars, etc. It comes at us moment by moment, day after day, and distracts us from real engagement with things about which we should be concerned.

Postman also deserves credit for a few things beyond these very engaging criticisms of our modern culture. First, he doesn't disparage TV. He understands that junk is what TV is about and he's OK with that on some level. He simply wants us to be aware that TV is simply not capable of working on a higher plane and we shouldn't think it is. Second, it is amazing how Postman's ideas have become more, not less relevant, in a world of 24-hour cable, the internet, and world-wide cell phone access. Postman has really nailed something important here and this is a book that should be read by everyone.

As pointed out by numerous other reviewers, Postman has pointed out a central problem in U.S. society (as well as in many other "developed" nations). As the book is a good few years old at this point, we can look at the predictions and see how many have come true. A disturbing number of the predictions have. Something that has occurred even beyond Postman's predictions, however, is the extent to which actors and singers and athletes shape the "average citizen's" opinions. Why does anyone care what a particular singer or actor thinks about an issue, as opposed to anyone else? That anyone allows their opinions to be shaped in this manner, and to spend hours reading magazines about celebrity lives and relationships, is as troubling to me as any television program. That all being said, the solution may not be to turn off the television. Television is here, it isn't going anywhere, and there are a few nuggets of value there. The key, as has been repeated by countless others, is to be selective in what is being watched, and to be particularly careful in helping to shape our children's viewing choices. I make sure I am aware of what my son is watching and THEN I DISCUSS THE PROGRAM with him. Did we get anything out of the show, or was it just entertainment? There is intelligent media out there. Television is not evil in and of itself, and you can find mindless media in any form. I would be happier with my son watching an episode of "House, M.D." or "Meet the Press" than his reading many of the books on the best sellers list. Mindless is mindless, whatever the medium. Postman himself points out that some occasional entertainment is not the issue, only when this becomes our main way of receiving information. One can watch SOME tv and also be a serious reader. One can develop the patience and analytical abilities necessary to truly analyze complicated issues. We all have a duty to find books and programs (be they television, radio or video or whatever) and to ignore or severely limit the fluff.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business is an intriguing book written by Neil Postman (in 1985) on the gradual dumbing down of society, specifically in the United States. This seemingly prophetic work focuses on the transition from spoken, to written and then to the image based culture in which we now live. The purpose of this was to show the slow but seemingly steady breaking down of society in the name of entertainment and amusement.

Neil Postman begins his book by comparing and contrasting Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's book 1984. He states in the introduction "Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 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. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy"(Foreword, vii,viii).

The forward of Neil Postman's book sets the stage for what he addresses and reveals throughout Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman argues that society has changed from a spoken and written culture to an image based one. This change has affected the way we learn and use knowledge. People today are so eager to be amused that we'd rather go to the movies or watch a television program than read a book or an article on a scientific study. Our image based culture has caused our attention spans to become shorter. In chapter 1 of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman discusses how Americans need to be entertained. This is seen in how an overweight person would never be elected president in today's world and how the anchors on the news are always attractive. In today's world, people need to be amused or they will lose interest. The well known evangelist Billy Graham has even recognized this unfortunate truth. He once said that he uses laughter to keep the crowd entertained so that he can get his message across.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business presents a view of our culture that is very alarming. The move from a spoken and written based culture to that of an image based one has led to a sharp decline in attention span, a loss of critical thinking skills, and the gradual dumbing down of America. Now, many would rather watch television shows like Jersey Shore than read a book or increase their knowledge.

This is a book that has left a strong impression - filled with undeniable truths that can literally shake you to the core if you have not previously read books of this nature. I have gone back to the introduction many times, finding the truths presented there in a few words to be an excellent description for our times. I would recommend this book highly - you will not be disappointed. We really are amusing ourselves to death.

They say, "you are what you eat." Neil Postman takes this to it's next logical step. "You are what you experience."

Mr. Postman focuses on two inventions, the telegraph, and the photograph. One allowed news from across the globe to fill our brains with so much junk information, that trivia games had to be invented to make use of it. The other allowed the world to be presented in a disjoint way, such that an image of a tree you walk by everyday, can be taken in such a way that, while you're assured it's real, you do not recognize it.

Television, according to Mr. Postman, is the child of these two inventions.

By taking us back in time 150 years, this book looks at famous speeches to examine the capability of the minds of both the speakers, and the listeners. Once these speeches are analyzed, the author barely has to give examples of present-day speech to make his point. It is obvious to anyone who has listened to any recent presidential debate, that this level of dialogue and logic does not exist anymore.

The brain is an incredible, organic machine. But it is only programmed in one way. That is through experience. So if all it is presented with is 30-second sound bites, and paragraph, or even sentence-length logic, then that is how it will "wire" itself.

The next time you hear that students are not being taught history, you may want to consider if they are even capable of retaining it. Appropriately, Neil Postman invites serious consideration of Huxley's 'A Brave New World', with it's more willing inhabitants, as the more likely dystopian future, rather than Orwell's '1984'.

It is a rare book that encourages and gives readers the capability to step outside of our own minds to examine the forces that "wired" it, and continue to do so. I will move on from this book to read some McLuhan, and Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. My hope is that I can help teach my children to avoid, or at the very least recognize, the trap that may be inherent in this technology.

Originally posted at the LibertarianChristians Blog:

Neil Postman is a cultural observer and critic, educator, and communications critic at New York University. His well-known book Amusing Ourselves to Death gives us a chilling reminder of how much the media we use on a regular basis affect our thought patterns. In particular, Postman's main concern is the effect of television on public discourse. It is not the entertainment value of television that concerns him so much as the elevation of television as a primary conveyor of what is considered "the truth." He was keenly aware of the power of the media to influence at a basic level how people think and feel about the world around them. Considering how much we as libertarians criticize the mainstream media for capitulating to the State at every turn - whether the left or the right - Postman helps us get behind the medium itself to understand the epistemology. We can then see that while Orwell's 1984 is still of great concern, perhaps the even greater danger is the Huxleyan vision from Brave New World:

"Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 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. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture."

*The Medium is the Metaphor*

Part 1 of the book is a fascinating exposition of epistemology - how we come to know what we know. The media we use is an integral part of the equation. Media helps build the structures of thought, and thus thought communication. Postman writes:

"When Galileo remarked that the language of nature is written in mathematics, he meant it only as a metaphor. Nature itself does not speak. Neither do our minds or our bodies or, more to the point of this book, our bodies politic. Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever `languages' we find it possible and convenient to employ. We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as `it' but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture."

The "bias" of a medium upon a culture is unseen yet deeply felt. Nowhere is the difference more clearly seen than between typography and television. In a culture characterized by print, thought processes will tend to organize themselves into a similar linear and logical order that is seen on the pages of books. Proper use and expression of words becomes the norm. This was the state of America during the founding era and lasted, for all intents and purposes, until the late 20th century. It was the culture enriched by the likes of Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Paine, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain. Postman explains how widely available print media constructed the culture of America.

*"And Now . . . This"*

Television, as a different medium, changes the metaphor. Postman says, "Television has achieved the status of `meta-medium' - an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well." It is no longer a pseudo-mystery but is in the background of everywhere we go and everything we see.

And thus, we come to Postman's primary criticism of how television is used and what it affects negatively: in religion, in education, and in news and politics. Most of the Christians I routinely interact with understand his criticism of religion distinctly well. The so-called "televangelist" movement certainly diminishes the depth of theological discourse throughout Christendom. It is presented primarily as entertainment, losing what makes religion a historic, profound, and sacred human activity. Instead of spiritual transcendence, the preacher is tops. "God comes out as second banana." (Given, this is not universally the case but it is certainly the right characterization.)

The educationists can be heard praising the television medium as "the future of education" just as often today as when Postman wrote initially in 1985. "We face the rapid dissolution of the assumptions of an education organized around the slow-moving printed word, and the equally rapid emergence of a new education based on the speed-of-light electronic image." Postman's harshest criticism is reserved for those who would dumb us down in deference to the lowest common denominator.

I know of no libertarian that does not clearly see the vacuous nature of television news programs. Moreover, this flows straight into the political arena. There was once a time when the President of the United States could walk down the street without people recognizing him, simply because no one knew what the president looked like. Now, however, "looking presidential" is just as important, perhaps more important, as knowing the Constitution or having good ideology. This is the power of television: to put the superficial and unimportant into the forefront.

*Culture is Dead! Long Live Culture!*

Neil Postman can almost come off as a Luddite by the end of Amusing Ourselves to Death, but his criticism should still be heeded. It is not simply that Postman despises the very pixels of your new 42 inch LCD panel. On the contrary, he admits that as entertainment it is excellent and quite fun. I don't think he is even saying that no serious message can ever be conveyed through television or a movie (or else he would be throwing all theatre out the window as well). No, the main message is a warning that serious messages are easily lost within the medium, and there is great danger when matters of utmost seriousness are couched as mere entertainment.

Amusing Ourselves to Death truly helped coalesce many disjointed thoughts in my own mind about the usefulness, or lack thereof, of the television medium. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to those of you who observe culture with a watchful eye, and wish to respond accordingly to a trend that we intuitively understand to be negative in the long run.

Amused to Death1984 (Signet Classics)Brave New World

I was introduced to this book via Roger Waters' excellent 1992 album Amused to Death, which was inspired by Neil Postman's work here. Postman is not arguing that television itself is bad, rather he's considering the fact that not everything is fit for television, namely -- news, politics, education, and religion. He introduces the concept that, unlike George Orwell's 1984 (Signet Classics) where "big brother" is telling us what we can do, a more likely scenario that may play out in our culture is that of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where television has become our Soma. It is a very interesting read, and considering it was written approximately 25 years ago, many of the common things found on television today (reality TV, talking heads on CNN & Fox, etc.) were being discussed in their infancy stages in Postman's book. Postman takes us through the age of the founding fathers and how we went from a literary culture to an image culture. It is very eye-opening to read how news and politics took place 200 years ago compared to today. Highly recommend.