This was an amazing book that I devoured in just three days. I don't know where I got it from. But I had it and stumbled upon it and it was an amazing read. Postman writes that, "this book is an inquiry into and a lamentation about the most significant American cultural fact of the second half of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television. He emphasizes what Marshall McLuhan said: that the medium is the message; that the way we communicate also transforms our way of thinking, which then transforms the content of our culture. For example, a clock recreates time as an independent and precise sequence just as writing recreates the mind as a "tablet on which experience is written" and television transforms the news into a commodity.
At his worst, Postman is a luddite who sees nothing of value in television (and probably wouldn't see much good in the internet either). But he is also a great lover of the written word. He writes that the age of print created a definition of intelligence that gave priority to objective, rational use of the mind and encouraged logic in public discourse. Contrast this with oral cultures that value proverbs and long memories. He writes that "It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistence with the growth of a print culture..."
The problem, for Postman, began with the telegraph. He quotes Thoreau, who wrote that "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate..." And so the telegraph diminished the quality of discourse by introducing irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. You become impotent because the news gives you a bunch of opinions about issues that you can't do anything about because they are irrelevant to your life. Then, the public discourse becomes incoherent-- it can only move information, not collect, explain, or analyze information. So he writes that telegraphy is the opposite of typography, which has the capacity to do all three of those things without actually sending the information. He also criticizes photography, which diminishes discourse by taking things out of context.
The worst thing about television, for Postman, is not the junk TV. He loves junk TV and says that it is better since it is pure entertainment. The real problem is TV that purports to educate or inform: 60 Minutes, Sesame Street, Nova, and more. The problem is that everything on television must entertain the viewer to keep their attention and be successful, but some higher forms of discourse are harmed by excessive influence of entertainment. Postman writes:
That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by newscasters to 'join them tomorrow.' What for? One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for a month of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters' invitation because we know that the 'news' is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to say. Everything about a news show tells us this-- the good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter, the exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage, the attractive commercials-- all these and more suggest that what we have just seen is no cause for weeping. A news show, to put it plainly, is a format for entertainment, not for education, reflection, or catharsis.
It is the natural endpoint of using the medium of television that everything on it must become a form of entertainment. The sad thing about it is that Postman was so right 40 years ago and that it's all gotten worse. The news just kept going on and the state of our discourse is worse than ever. Postman thought it was ridiculous that an actor, Ronald Reagan, was President. We can only imagine what he would have thought of reality TV star Donald Trump.
The news doesn't suggest that any story has real implications. Newscasters most frequently describe major legislative actions as a "victory/defeat for Democrats/Republicans." Because anything that would require the viewer to stop and think would disrupt the viewer's attention to the next segment. When reading a newspaper or a book, the reader can pause and reflect. A television viewer's moment of reflection is immediately interrupted by the bright lights and loud sounds of the next segment or a commercial. And so the newscaster plays a role as a "character who is marginally serious by who stays well clear of authentic understanding." The commercials are the most ridiculous part of the news or any "serious" program. In what might be the best illustration of the whole book, Postman writes the following:
What would you think of me, and this book, if I were to pause here, tell you that I will return to my discussion in a moment, and then proceed to write a few words in behalf of United Airlines or the Chase Manhattan Bank. You would rightly think that I had no respect for you and, certainly, no respect for the subject. And if I did this not once by several times in each chapter, you would think the whole enterprise unworthy of your attention. Why, then, do we not think a news show similarly unworthy?
And television education, like Sesame Street or nature documentaries, can never replace real education. Postman says there are three commandments for educational programming on TV: (1) thou shalt have no prerequisites, (2) thou shalt induce no perplexity, and (3) thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt. Prerequisites are not possible, since, to reach a broad audience, TV programming must be accessible to a wide number of people. It does not pay to tell a viewer to come back after he or she has seen some other, more foundational programming. But as we know, some education requires prerequisites: a student cannot learn calculus without prior understanding of algebra. TV may induce no perplexity since that would induce time spent not watching TV. Learners must become perplexed to gain understanding, but TV viewers have no time to do so since they can't (in 1985) pause the TV. But even now that we can pause videos, we rarely do so. And without a teacher to ask questions to, the gains are limited. Worse, there can be no exposition. Television requires drama and storyline. Everything must be visualized and placed in a theatrical context, and viewers eschew long exposition.
The big thing this book makes me think of is how much has changed since it was written. The book is all about television, but much of it can apply to the internet and cell phones. With the gift of hindsight, it looks more like television was a transitory stage to the internet, which may itself be a stage on the way to something else. But the internet it much broader. Our attention spans are even shorter than before, but at least the internet can provide us with more articles and writing than television does. While television offered us many channels controlled by only six corporations, the internet offers us billions of voices controlled by a few platforms and algorithms. No matter what the medium is, it deeply impacts the messages sent and the discourse that follows.
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