By Neil Postman

Listened to audiobook at the reserved recommendation of Tyler Hall.

Completed around 2021-02.

Notes

Claims can’t do political philosophy on television.. but seems shortsighted on what the power of the medium really is, and how it can evolve.

The idea that the medium creates acceptable content is fair, but the medium is not stagnant.

As writing wanes and tv increases, does this reduce the quality of our cultural conversation? He claims so, but I’m not sure

The truth likelihood of a statement is not independent of the medium. This makes sense, as he uses citing speech vs text for a paper, where citing a text may reasonably be more reliable as a source of truth.

Truth comes with the biases of the form of expression

Information Action Ratio:

Information input to action output. Claim, Telegraph increased information that was not actionable, by connecting distant bodies quickly.

“Thinking does not play well on television”. I think this assumption is worth testing today.

Must television be watched? What if we blended radio / television / audio / podcasts. Maybe there is a way to have media be consumable no matter how you choose to consume it (like a podcast that also has a youtube video)

Sesame Street: education indistinguishable from entertainment? I’ll object to that I think

Argues that it is better when we vote by party line instead of relying on an individual person to persuade us that they are a better individual. Because this persuasion is not truly rational, unlike voting for a party that shares your interests

We don’t learn what we are studying, we more so learn about things like learning and culture through the act of studying. Like teaching via Sesame Street teaches us more about our culture than it does about letters and numbers.

TV = curriculum

Commandments of television imply reasons why tv cannot ever focus well on education or quality content. But there is an objection here, and YouTube might also be an argument against this being the only use of video.

He finally uses some data to back up that learning is difficult with television when compared to text

Quotes

(automatically selected by Readwise)

“Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death)

The medium influences the content