Summary Of Communication Revolution By Postman

Postman’s overarching idea is that the television has changed not only the way in which news is presented to the public, but also that it has changed the very way we think. Although his book has two parts, I would like to divide it into three. First, Postman writes about the nature of information and how it relates to both the medium that is conveying it and the audience that is receiving it. Next, Postman takes us through a brief history of the multiple revolutions in communication as well as focusing in on how our own nation’s has changed due to its communication revolution. He finishes in his present day to tell us how the television has affected everything from politics to education. Mainly in the second chapter, Postman argues that different forms of communication …show more content…
Powerful people took notice of the power of books as ideas could spread like fire. On one hand, science began to blossom from this fertile ground. People became more intelligent as a whole. On the other hand, people began to reduce religion to the status of superstition. Each new way of communication brought with it both benefits and problems. The telegraph could be seen as the harbinger of what was to come. In connecting distant places apart at the speed of the wire, it opened the floodgates of information. Newspapers moved away from the relevant and into the entertaining. Postman makes it clear that the people of early America thought differently than those in more recent America. The difference is extremely visible in the speeches, and the audience’s expectations, of political candidates. The thought of listening to a continuous speech for at least 7 hours would be enough to bring agony to most current day Americans. Yet, this was not only tolerated, it was expected. The early Americans were mostly all literate and so they expected speeches to be closer to a book than a