Amusing Ourselves To Death Analysis

The Medium and Conveying Intelligence Postman begins his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, showing how the world may not have fallen into the “Big Brother” type dystopia that George Orwell warned of, but we had fallen into another. Postman describes the dystopia originally created by Aldous Huxley where there are “technologies that undo capacities to think,” something that could very well be said about the people of today. The television and internet have dulled people to the point where they are willing to accept almost anything they see on it. Julian Chambliss argues that the medium is not necessary to convey an intelligent idea. In Critical Survey of Graphic Novels: Heroes and Superheroes and Studies in American Culture, Chambliss explains how comic books have had a major impact on the public over the 20th century. Neil Postman …show more content…
“Epistemology is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge,” the study of how knowledge came about is important to know how people interpret what is a valid medium for knowledge. He uses the example of oral versus written word. In academia considering a spoken word as credible seems outlandish, but anything that is written down is immediately considered more credible just because it is written. The same could be seen again happening with the television and the written word where the primary medium for truth changes from the written word to the television. People are much more likely to find resonance in a moving and speaking image than ink on paper so they are more likely to believe television over a book. At the time this book was written the television was the most modern form of communication but as time has gone on the internet has dethroned the television as the primary