Amusing Ourselves To Death 1-3 PDF

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Mid-Term Essay...

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Chapter 1: The Medium Is the Metaphor The form of public discourse in American culture has changed from print to image. How has the content also changed? Postman writes in order to discuss this question. He offers examples of how medium controls message, including smoke signals, graven images, clocks, written alphabet, glasses, microscopes, IQ, and mathematics. These illustrate Marshall McLuhan , “The medium is the message.” (8) The form of human conversation (“conversation” refers to all of the information exchanged and all of the techniques to exchange it) affects what is convenient to express. What is convenient to express becomes the content of culture. Therefore, the form of conversation affects the content of the culture. For example, a society that primarily uses smoke signals is not likely to discuss philosophy; it would take too long and be too difficult. In the same way, a person with an ugly body will not look good on TV and therefore not be elected President. One’s body is not relevant to one’s ideas when one is expressing them through radio or print. But on TV, visual imagery reigns. Therefore the form of TV works against the content of philosophy. Therefore you cannot do political philosophy on TV. A new tool contains a new idea that goes beyond the tool itself. Eyeglasses corrected vision in the twelfth century but the idea that went beyond the glasses was that man could improve his body. The clock is another tool that contained a powerful idea. Before, time was a product of nature measured by the sun and seasons. Now, time is measured by a machine using minutes and seconds. The clock changed us into time-watchers, then time-savers, and finally time-servers. Thus, changing the metaphor for time changed how we view time itself. The written alphabet is a different tool than the spoken. It changes the metaphor for speech from voice to something else. It freezes speech. It changes focus from the ears to the eyes. It then allows the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian and the scientist to study it. He closes the chapter with this logical progression: We converse about nature and ourselves in languages that make it convenient. We don’t see nature itself; our view of it is shaped by our language. Our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture. (15) Chapter 2: "Media as Epistemology" A great metaphor shift has taken place in the U.S, -- with the result that the content of much of the public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. Before, under print, discourse was different in that it was coherent, serious and rational. Now, under the visual, discourse is shriveled and absurd. Epistemology is about the origins and nature of knowledge. It takes in definitions of truth and the sources from which such definitions come.

Postman argues that definitions of truth are derived, in part, from the character of the media of communication through which information is conveyed -- in earlier times, print; and now, visual (TV and computers). Postman argues that every medium of communication has resonance -- it has power beyond its first use, the power to direct us to organize our minds and integrate our experience of the world. He says that the bias of a medium "sits heavy, felt but unseen, over a culture," and he uses three examples of "truthtelling" to explain (a tribe in western Africa, a doctoral oral exam and the trial of Socrates). Postman asserts that the concept of truth is linked to the biases of forms of expression. "Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned. It must appear in its proper clothing or it is not acknowledged, which is a way of saying that the 'truth' is a kind of cultural prejudice. Each culture conceives of it as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant." 3 warnings regarding media as epistemology:

1. Changes in media do not bring about changes in the structure of people's minds nor changes in their cognitive capabilities. 2. An epistemological shift probably won't include everyone and everything. TV does not have an entirely unchallenged influence. 3. A TV- based epistemology pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape. It does not pollute everything. His explanation includes these: Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality (but destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration); it created prose and made poetry into an elitist and exotic form of expression; it made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into mere superstition; it assisted in the growth of the nation-state but made patriotism into a sordid, if not, lethal weapon. Typography's 400-year dominance was of greater benefit than deficit. Most modern ideas about uses of the intellect were formed by the printed word, as were ideas about education, knowledge, truth and information. As typography moves to edges of culture and TV takes its place at the center, the seriousness, clarity and value of public discourse dangerously declines. 18-19 In oral cultures, proverbs are very important. Walter Ong: “They are incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.” Cultures relied on proverbs to determine what is right and wrong.

19-20 In a modern court print has the most resonance. But speech still has some — testimony, and juries generally rely on listening. 21 In academia the written word is truer than the spoken (citations should be of written things), despite oral exams. 23 “Each culture conceives of [truth] as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant.” 24 “As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.” 25 In a culture, intelligence is derived from its communication. In an oral culture, memorising stories, proverbs, etc is good. But “merely quaint” in a print culture. 25-6 In a print culture, to be intelligent you must be able to stay still for some time (to read), read, be somewhat objective to interpret the stance of the author, judge the quality of an argument over the duration of the work, cope with the abstractions of the text. 27 Is not saying changes in media change the structure of minds (although that may be the case) just that new media change the structure of discourse. [How do the web, email, SMS change discourse?] 28 “We have reached, I believe, a critical mass in that electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character of our symbolic environment. We are now a culture whose information, ideas and epistemology are given form by television, not by the printed word.” Just because TV and print coexist, doesn’t mean there is parity — “print is now merely a residual epistemology.” [He suggests that print’s survival is aided by the computer - I assume he’d now, post-Net, see these as different things, or that the computer is bringing a resurgence of “print”?] 29 “Most of our modern ideas about the uses of the intellect were formed by the printed word, as were our ideas about education, knowledge, truth and information. I will try to demonstrate that as typography moves to the periphery of our culture and television takes its place at the center, the seriousness, clarity and, above all, value of public discourse dangerously declines.” [But declines only in terms of what our previous printed-word-based culture determines as desirable surely? Is that definition of intellect objectively “better” than a televisual (or now Net) based one? What would a televisual/Net based definition of intellect be?] Chapter 3: "Typographic America" Students should read Chapter 3 but not take notes, other than understandsings of how typography influenced early America. Postman's comments about Alexis de Tocqueville's writings in "Democracy in America" are especially worth reading carefully and reflecting throughout the quarter (about pamphlets, how firemarms are an equalizing force in America, printing being an equalizing force, etc.).

Also worth pondering is the reminder that America, unlike most modern nations, was founded by intellectuals -- and that from the 17th to the 19th Century, printed matter was virtually all that was available -- no visual media were in existence. Thus, talking and printing were pretty much the only way to convey ideas and opinions 33 From 16th century on, all knowledge began to be transferred to the printed page in America. Books imported from Britain. 34 Reading was not regarded as an elitist activity. Classless. 35 First printing press in US: 1638 at Harvard University. 36 Most early printing was newsletters. Maybe lack of literature was due to lack of paper — Washington had to write to generals on scraps of paper without envelopes for want of paper. First newspaper: 169009-25 by Benjamin Harris in Boston: Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick. Banned after first issue. 37 First continuously-published paper: Boston News-Letter from 1704. By 1730, 7 papers published regularly in 4 colonies. By 1800, more than 180 published. 40 Lyceum Movement — a form of adult education. By 1835, more than 3,000 Lyceum lecture halls in 15 states. Intellectuals, writers and humourists spoke there to audiences of all classes. 41 Printed word had a monopoly of public discourse until late 19th century....