The World According to Neil Postman 

Amusing Ourselves to Death is one of the core books I always go back to

I read Amusing Ourselves to Death in 2006 and I still think about it on weekly basis

More people need to see this, this was such a huge eye opener.

Wonderful video. I have a deep longing for conversations and experiences of substance and I often feel so discouraged by my surroundings of people interested in the most trivial and shallow of topics. Even more so I am discouraged by my own propensity to sit and scroll, often times reflecting back on my day and thinking "what a waste, I'm captive to dopamine." I read Amusing Ourselves to Death and looked for content on it online. I have 2 months in Banff national parked booked in the spring and my plan is to get away from all the noise of the big city with all its flashy lights and attention grabbing devices and spend some time with poets, novelists, essayists, and most importantly nature. I hope for some sort of reset or detox to reprioritize my perspective and withdraw from dopamine addiction. Probably TMI for a youtube comment but I appreciate you and your video. Cheers.

This guy was a prophet.

As a technologist, this is probably THE problem to work towards currently and also the least recognized. The Computer whose nature Postman didn't fully understand is a dynamic medium which is currently molded like an amplified television, but it can also become a medium that surpasses even print in augmenting human intellect and cause very positive social change. That is the problem statement for us, to mould it into such a medium. Bret Victor is someone to check out. And the work done by the ARPA-PARC community in the 1960s.

Thanks Joshua. I studied personally with Neil Postman. He was a great man. Although ultimately provocative, he was quite conscious of his « transgressions », which at that time were a national sport among hard thinkers ( artists, composers, writers) catching new human truths, as well as old eternal ones. Neil Postman was a nice person and a good human being.

This video is very true but very underrated😔

I really wish Postman had lived long enough to see Web 2.0 and smartphone culture. I'm fortunate to have engaged with his works in the mid-90's which helped me contextualize what was coming down the line in society a scant few years later.

Amusing Ourselves to Death has only become more and more relevant as time goes on. I often think of this work by Postman and explain it to any who will listen. If you are a fan of Amusing Ourselvs to Death i'd like to recommend a book called "Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology" by Eric Brende

This was a very good and well made summary, more enticing you to look into it and reflect than bulletining it into us.

Wow, well said. I'm shocked this doesn't have more views, it definitely deserves them

Really well done. Needs to be seen by more people.

It's really true amusement is even entering Church right now. Now some churches got concerts even entertainment for children there

What drives the _short content_ model over the _long form_ is the need to break the flow for advertising. Money is the motivator in most things. The news format of short, meme-laden items are geared to trigger superficial emotional responses that set the viewer up to receive the pitch to consume something. TV programming today is built to agitate and unsettle. An agitated mind is more receptive to the psychological warfare/programming of advertising. Attention spans have become shorter. Everyone with cable channel surfs endlessly. McLuhan got it right. Currently television is literally programming people.

Great video. This book made a huge impact on me in the early 2000's.

Agreed. Thank you for your cogent presentation. As one has said, if the service is free you are the product. I need to reread Postman.

We always have been a trivial culture. A lot of people had easy access to books 50 years ago, but only a few actually read them. Today it got much easier to access books every time of the day and they can even be listened to. So everyone can listen to any book while commmuting to work. This is what technology allowed us. Not to mention that we have access to the greatest amount of knowledge in our phone and we use it for cat videos.

0:52: mediums? It's medium (sg.), media (pl.); visum, visa.

amazing vid

Great video, thank you. Wished it was longer, but if it was, it would have been bombarded with more interrupting advertisements probably…

I've come to notice a pattern in videos that critique the negative effects of tech and social media--the frequent use of footage depicting young girls dancing, or doing makeup and taking selfies, as representative of the negative effects of the medium While there are reasonable interpretations to be made from this (tech platforms are shallow, hedonistic, equate appearance with worth, push unrealistic standards, give people body-image issues etc.), I think the use of these visual motifs, especially when taking into account their frequency, ultimately comes off as more reactionary, shifting blame for social ills onto women The film critic Roger Ebert once described Film as not an intellectual or logical medium, but an emotional one. That is, the immediate impact of the visuals is what sinks in most for the audience. Satirical films like Fight Club or American Psycho are notorious for being misinterpreted and having their characters idolized, and Ebert would say that the audience could not be faulted for taking things at face value. The images argue for themselves. Talking about the numbing, oppressive nature of tech over footage of young women dancing ultimately appeals to the same instincts behind the Salem witch trials-inspiring a punitive stance towards the harmless expressions of young women, in place of the real causes. While the true culprits and those with power-tech execs, legislators, and such-appear inaccessible to the average person, young women are everywhere as an easy vector for ire and resent, and many online movements harboring these misplaced grievances have sprung up

It's sad to see so few views and comments here.

Actually, Orwell & Huxley were both right.

🙂

The reason why it's important that we be traumatized through the use of the MEDIA is because it aids in getting us to be more AWARE. Also, by the time our number gets called....we must be LIGHT AS A FEATHER. NON-ATTACHED. So all of this is a testing ground designed to get us centered and balanced....in order for us to transcend to the next level of consciousness.