I think that Postman’s argument translates extremely well to the modern digital age of learning. Educational content on television is something that I am largely unfamiliar with, but I do spent quite a lot of time in the educational sector of YouTube, and I would essentially liken those digital videos to the shows Postman critiques in this chapter. They do, in fact, have value, but the retention levels when compared to actually reading and synthesizing the information yourself are markedly different. Watching things can be a supplement to traditional education but simply cannot replace it because the three things television/digital media cannot do–his three commandments–are all required in order to actually have real learning take place.

For example, I find YouTube to be a great supplement when I need to watch someone work out every step of a math problem, when I want to watch a quick summary of some concept covered in class (a-la Crash Course), or when I want to get an overview of some non-critical but interesting subject. I would not consider YouTube to be my primary source of knowledge about any topic that I have truly been educated on, such as calculus or computer programming, because even though I may have watched many videos about it they have been nothing more than a footnote compared to the true education I have received on the subject in terms of depth. This is through no fault of the creators’, it is simply a limitation of the medium they are working with. Learning in this manner does have value, contrary to the most extreme interpretations of Postman, but not beyond as an add-on to a traditional form of study. Over-reliance on these digital forms of media for learning adds nothing beyond that point except overconfidence in knowledge that one ultimately does not have about a given subject.

Paragraphs for Discussion:

Page 126: “But what virtues attach…”

Page 135: “This is the lesson…”

Page 141: “Tyrants of all varieties…”

Reflection: Postman may seem to be attacking religion in this chapter. The same may be said of Drive In Jesus. In actuality, these two pieces are only attacking a certain kind of religion, a kind that cheapens and makes less important the things that make religion significant. Religion is inextricably tied to the holy places where services are conducted. We do not say “I’m going to hear a sermon”, we say “I’m going to church.” These hallowed places and the import they lend to those who preach and listen within them are just as critical to the idea of organized religion as anything in their theology. Without them, religion is taken much less seriously. If I can watch a sermon from my couch while in my pajamas and eating Doritos, it will feel just as impersonal as the episodes of television I will inevitably watch afterward. Going to church is not just important because of the content of the pastor’s message ; it is important because going out of our way to attend is a ritual that we must complete to show that the message matters to us. Online lectures never hold up compared to the in-person variant, and the exact same thing can be said of church: seeing the televised variant is perhaps better than nothing, but only when extenuating circumstances demand it, because otherwise the experience will be so cheapened by the medium in which it is delivered that it will become meaningless to the receiver.

One sentence summary: Postman demonstrates that even though we are deluged with information every day via television news, we are still not any more informed because of the fact that news is presented as entertainment.

Important paragraphs: Page 110, “My point is that we are by now…” & Page 103, “This perception of a news show…”

Reflection: This chapter was perhaps my favorite so far in the book. I am beginning to see Postman’s ideas connect with the things that I have been noticing and experiencing in my everyday life. His comments on USA Today, for example. Reading about how their bite-size news reporting techniques being the anomaly at the time of this book’s publication made me heavily reconsider the way I consume the news. When I tried to remember the last news article I read–that wasn’t some kind of scientific journal–I realized that very rarely are the pieces of any great length, no matter the source. When something is more than, say, 8 or 9 paragraphs long, no matter the importance of the information I internally wonder why they had to be so verbose about it. Because of the bite-size news stories fed to us by television, we have all come to expect news from all sources to follow this same “get in and get out” strategy of essentially blurting out the facts and running away. I can’t even imagine sitting down to spend a concerted amount of time reading a long news article unless it was exceptionally compelling or relevant to my own life. I hadn’t considered this being anything other than the norm, but after Postman pointed it out I have realized that I see this impact that television has had on the way we consume news is more pervasive today than he could have ever imagined.

One sentence summary: Postman discusses the extent to which television has influenced not only our consumption of media, but the way we behave in every aspect of our daily lives.

• Page 87 “Of course, to say that television is entertaining…”
• Page 97-98 “What all of this means is that our culture…”

Postman reflection: I really enjoyed this chapter. Postman essentially covered all of the ways the influence of television has extended beyond just media and into our daily lives. He says at one point that it is less important for people to satisfy “the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship” (98). I hadn’t really considered that, but as soon as I read it it clicked for me. Think about Dr. Phil; he’s a licensed psychologist who has essentially left behind all trappings of his profession in order to create a version of things that is more appealing to watch on television. Is it still a valid form of psychological therapy? Has Dr. Phil’s form of help stripped away too much to be helpful? I don’t know enough to say the answer, but the fact that it’s even conceivable is very telling. Television has, as Postman claims, taken out a large portion of the substance of things and replaced it with showmanship. I tend to agree with assessment. Postman has extended this argument for almost all professions, including doctors, lawyers, and even the clergy.

Podcast reflection: I thought this was a great continuation of the previous sessions on attention and how to manage it properly. In particular, I liked that he mentioned that designers should change the goal from “making it easy to send a message” to “creating the highest quality of messaging”, for example. Just because it is easy for us to get in contact with others does not mean that this is always a good thing or even a necessary thing. Essentially, Harris is suggesting that we should shift from a mundane design goal to a Human design goal; that is, we need to design things in order to create the best feelings in their users rather than to just deliver on a service regardless of the effects. I thought this was great point, and something that has made me think more than a little bit about my own relationship with technology.

1. Television profoundly changed our culture to one of immediate knowledge and immediate release, and this change has been so complete that it is now almost unnoticed.

2. Page 68-69 “You may get a sense of what this means…”

Page 67 “As Thoreau implied…”

I think these paragraphs do a very good job of summing up Postman’s thoughts about how television and forms of media like it have changed our culture. He is arguing, essentially, that instead of focusing on quality of content we have since become inundated with rapid content such that we cannot truly take the time to understand anything. This is what he means by “Peek-a-boo World”, that we are constantly realizing and forgetting new information in a quest for our own entertainment. I see this in my own behavior, now that I know to take notice. When I finished reading this very chapter I had already picked up my phone and begun to read an article about a subject that didn’t really impact me directly at all (thus the relevancy of irrelevancy mentioned by Postman) but I nevertheless found interesting. However, right now, 5 minutes later, I couldn’t tell you any more than the general gist of the article’s message. We have become so obsessed with quantity that we have completely forgotten how to actually internalize and understand information in any kind of meaningful way.

3. I enjoyed the podcast segment, but frankly it didn’t tell me anything I found groundbreaking. I’ve been seeing a therapist for many years so mindfulness, meditation and their links to happiness and well-being are something I have been hearing about for a long time. However, I did not realize that we mind-wander about 50% of our waking hours. After she said that I began to take notice, and actually found myself wandering for about 2 minutes of her final 8 minutes. Better than the average, but I was really trying. I think that if we each tried to limit this wandering our individual productivity and sense of accomplishment would rise drastically.

Key Paragraphs

Page 49 “This language is pure…”

Page 46 “The Lincoln-Douglas audience…”

Media Inventory

a) Snapchat: app, phone, 1 hr/day

Reddit: app, phone, 1 hr/day

YouTube: app/website, 2 hr/day

Messages: app, .5 hr/day

Instagram: app, .35 hr/day

TikTok: app, .75 hr/day

Tinder: app, .1 hr/day

b) Snapchat, Messages, and Tinder all serve the purpose of social connection. Reddit and YouTube both serve as news, information, and entertainment. TikTok and Instagram are purely for entertainment purposes.

c) I enjoy being able to learn about new concepts in my spare time with Reddit and YouTube, and it is important to be able to keep up with my friends and loved ones via the apps I use for social connection. However, when it comes to apps used for entertainment I waste a lot of time scrolling mindlessly I do not generally feel very satisfied with my usage of those services in that case. My media generally satisfies me by providing what I want it to provide, however sometimes I am disappointed by my own inability to restrict my volume of consumption.

d) I do not like how I consume media. I consume too much of the wrong media too often. I have set limits for myself through my phone’s settings, but they are probably in need of a reduction. My one exception is YouTube, because I use that service almost in the same capacity as reading the newspaper or watching the morning news. While I eat breakfast I watch videos about the latest developments in fields that I’m interested in, or simply just try to learn something new about a subject I think is cool. Other than this, though, I am generally unhappy with how I consume media and would like to make changes to the amount I consume. Perhaps I could attempt to be a little more self-aware of when I’m just scrolling because I am bored, not because I genuinely want to do it. I would be comfortable trying to cut off my media intake for a day, or even multiple days, just to see how it would affect me.

Postman’s third chapter, entitled “Typographic America”, dealt largely with summary of American history. Specifically, he focused on the nature of the printing press’s interactions with the developing culture of America before, during, and post revolution until the mid to late 1800s. This involved such analyses as examining the literacy rates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the rise of the printing press in America, and the orations of the Great Awakening revivalist movement.

I found this take on American history to be very interesting. I had never before considered that the American discourse has been so shaped by its exposure to the printing press for centuries. I also did not know that the literacy rates in early America were so much higher than those in Britain during the same period, despite an abundance of schools in Britain–according to Postman, one every twelve miles on average. The historical context of how American discourse is and has been inextricably tied to and shaped by our main method of communication is just astounding. Even today, anyone who talks on stage speaks as if their words are going to be written down because Americans so associate the style of the printed word with truth. Postman did a truly good job of establishing that, for the entirety of American history, our medium of communication has had a drastic effect on the delivery and, more importantly, the content of our messages. I wonder in which forms of communication this influence by the printing press is most notable? Postman mentions the church, which fits my own experience. Perhaps news on television with the use of teleprompters? Acting?

Postman begins, in chapter 2, to explain a bit of why he is so critical of television. Essentially, Postman’s view is that television is changing and cheapening the way our previously print-based society views and understands the truth. Stephanie Bennett takes a very similar position in her article when she argues for the necessity of silence to personal growth. Manoush Zomorodi again drove home a similar point as she revealed that the boredom we avoid with our phones is actually critical to our own creativity.

I found these arguments to be very compelling. For a long time I have struggled to recover, for example, my love of reading fiction, in large part because I spend a large amount of time on my phone each day. Postman’s argument is not quite so relevant today–I spend almost no time consuming television–but I think that it can easily be extrapolated to apply to the technology of the modern day much like the arguments of Zomorodi and Bennett. I particularly enjoyed Postman’s remarks on the nature of truth and how our conceptions of it change as our media of communication change. I see this applied in my everyday life so frequently: when innocently discussing the news with a friend, we have to stop and read articles to ascertain the veracity of our words rather than accepting them at face value. I am excited to read further into Postman’s work and to see how exactly he develops his argument that television is bad for the collective human experience.

I think that a candidate’s appearance holds much more sway over the average voter than their platform. The vast majority of voters merely go based off of name association: they are more familiar with a name and that name follows with their party, so they vote. Simple as that. People are a lot more likely to speak favorably of the young and attractive candidate than the old and decrepit one. A modern example would be Democratic Candidate Pete Buttigieg. By all historical standards he has absolutely no place on the podium for presidential candidacy, and yet there he stands, neck-and-neck with seasoned politicians such as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom are much more qualified. Buttigieg is a unique candidate with his own views, as are they all, but he is not so unique to have garnered as much support as he has over most other candidates. I would argue that his relative youth and good looks has helped a great deal in keeping him on the public stage. We are okay with him remaining in front of us because he is not displeasing to look at. This argument is essentially a derivative of Postman’s statement about President Taft, who may have been immediately been thrown out of a modern election due to his own appearance being too grotesque for the American public to stomach on television.

Questions that I have: Is the average voter’s higher emphasis on appearance something that we need to consider immoral and abolish from society? Would it not be better, in that case, to only air political news over the radio to keep the voting more cerebral?