@jeffjarvis it’s okay to not watch any TV “news”

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

@anubis2814 @jayrosen_nyu @Dogzilla TV is an entertainment medium. TV news is #AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath #DystopianFuture #Politics #USA #TrendingMonday Neil Postman warned of a dark future, and today it's trending! We must not forget his warning and continue to think critically! #TrendingMonday https://www.GPTrending.com/#/?date=2023-02-20&topic=Monday

Media wins #amusingourselvestodeath https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/prime-hydration-aldi-drink-ksi-b2253062.html?amp

"To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity."
-Neil Postman, 1985

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#MediaLiteracy #MediaConsciousness #Writing #Literacy #Reading

One of my favorites:

"...every epistemology is the epistemology of a state of media development. Truth, like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented."
-Neil Postman, 1985

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#MediaLiteracy #SocialMedia #Philosophy #Epistemology #MediaConsciousness

"Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like."
-Neil Postman, 1985

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#MediaLiteracy #SocialMedia #media #MediaConsciousness

"Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility."
-Neil Postman, 1985

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#MediaLiteracy #SocialMedia #MediaConsciousness

"The news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is, quite precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well suited to fragmented conversation."
-Neil Postman, 1985

#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#MediaLiteracy #SocialMedia #technology #media

"As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyrrany "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984...people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
-Neil Postman, 1985
#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

#BraveNewWorld #1984

"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 the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irreverence."

-Neil Postman, 1985
#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

"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."

-Neil Postman, #AmusingOurselvesToDeath, 1985

I recently read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, a prophetic vision of how a western need to make everything "entertaining" would damage society. Many of today's problems stem from this problem.

In coming days/weeks, I'm going to post my favorite excerpts of the book to my feed with the hashtag #AmusingOurselvesToDeath

Highly encourage everyone to read it to get the full context of any quote. Lack of context is one of the problems Postman points to. This book was pubbed in 1985.

“We’re are all, as Huxley says someplace, Great Abbreviators, meaning that none of us has the wit to know the whole truth, the time to tell it if we believed we did, or an audience so gullible as to accept it” - Neil Postman

I cannot stop thinking about this from #AmusingOurselvesToDeath

“… the pace at which news is delivered, the emphasis on sensationalism and the sheer numbers of outlets, has turned important information and conversations … banal and destructive …”

https://ideasandthoughts.org/2018/06/11/amusing-ourselves-to-death/

#SocialMedia
#NeilPostman
#AmusingOurselvesToDeath

> Oh, to be born in the golden age of attention. When Lincoln and Douglas could have three-hour debates. When people would look at a painting for an afternoon. Paintings! I hear they’re like TV but they don’t move.

- https://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/time-management/stop-the-madness

#attentioneconomy #NeilPostman #AmusingOurselvesToDeath