Sunday, February 6, 2011

NEW MESSAGE FROM: Neil Postman

     In Neil Postman's novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, he is making the point that technology is taking over our lives without us realizing it. We are becoming so accustomed to the use of it that the way we communicate with one another is changing for the worse. In chapter one, Postman states that America has gone from the Age of Typography and to the Age of Television, and this has shifted the content and meaning of public discourse. Similarly, in his interview he talks about how we use technology so much that we don't even realize that we're talking to machines. He says that people will find themselves talking to answering machines, even door knobs, and other items just as often as they talk to humans. People will eventually get so used to communicating this way that they'll forget how to have normal conversations. Each new era will be becoming less intelligent.
     Another point Neil Postman makes in his interview is that we are becoming "pets to computers." We are so obsessed with the media and being entertained that we don't even realize how it is controlling us. In his book, Postman talks about us amusing ourselves the death (being the title and all). For example, majority of teenagers are glued to their cell phones all day every day. People are unknowingly making technology such a necessity in our day to day lives that soon enough human cloning will be a normality to all of us.

No comments:

Post a Comment