Neil Postman

Black Mirror is a British television series that examines a variety of issues that face contemporary society, usually involving the implications of new technologies. Created by Charlie Brooker, this celebrated fiction series illuminates the darker, often chaotic side of evolving media and human knowledge. Using an assortment of satirical themes and motifs, this show fascinates audiences by conveying a sense of anxiousness that is felt by the fluctuating nature of modern society and its…

The history of Journalism is something so unique to study. Media has improved in so many ways over time. Looking back to the ways people received their news, I come to realization that there are many differences. The speed of time as well as strategies taken to express information are just a few examples. The earliest methods of transmitting news was through words written, which possibly limited its content to what people took out of the message. The accuracy of what was processed depended on…

A book by John Clifton Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group and one of the greatest investors in the history, titled “Enough”(2009) is a relatively quick and good read in the financial literature genre. Although the book’s jacket is not very attractive— it has no photographs or illustrations, its title, in my opinion, is quite catchy, and attracts ones’ attention. Moreover, the title does encapsulate the main message—that the average investor feeds at the bottom of…

Discussions of violent video games help to connect to earlier research on media violence by essentially confirming and furthering their original findings. For instance, some of the early research on media violence suggested that if someone frequently watched a particularly violent television show like The Following or Dexter, then they are more likely to become less empathetic and desensitized to the violence depicted in the shows. The viewer then begins to notice the violence hardly for what it…

public policy. This disconnect has always been confusing to me until I read chapter nine of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. This chapter enlightened me as to why I have always found politics so unappealing. The reason is that in the conversation about politics, the medium allowances entirely misalign with my three values. In this chapter,…

Video games can lead to addiction, depression, aggression, and many health issues. In fact, research has been conducted for decades on the negative effects of video game play. So why then have video games become over a $16 billion industry? Well, video games have immense positive potential. In addition to their entertainment value, video games can offer considerable success when they are designed to address a specific problem or teach a specific skill. Video games can be a particularly valuable…

Nobody would argue that the use of technology has dramatically increased over the past decade, let alone over the past century. Need an example? By looking at our everyday lives, countless examples exist from cars to computers. Technology has impacted and changed every aspect of our lives. Namely, one piece of technology in particular transformed people’s lives: the television. Less than a century ago, people lived without the use of this revolutionary technological item. Now the vast majority…