Amusing Ourselves to Death - Part 1

A lot of conversations among the laity about digital media and their cultural consequences seem to inevitably reference the prophet-like Neil Postman and his seminal work, Amusing Ourselves to Death (AOD). I have read scholars in both the academic and popular arenas whose works borrow substantially (and explicitly) from Postman. As I continue to work through AOD I can see why Postman is continually referenced, but I also see a need for a bit of nuance that involves more than simply updating and reapplying Postman’s principles for digital 

mediums/technologies and cultures as they exist 25 years after AOD was published.

Postman begins his work by suggesting that Las Vegas is the living metaphor for the United States. We are an entertainment-obsessed culture that demands that all forms of information be disseminated through entertaining mediums. Television provided a means by which everyone with a television (or an inviting neighbor who had one) a chance to see the presidential debates. Apparently this is the first time that politics could be corrupted by an entertainment-oriented medium (as if pamphlets and speeches could not reduce the serious business of politics to a silly spectacle). Because everything and everybody has embraced this entertainment model, Postman suggests that Americans (in particular) are on the verge of 

amusing themselves to death.

An important point that Postman makes, and one that I think demands some thought as we interact with new media in today’s culture, is how forms determine and limit content. He argues that smoke signals, for example, aren’t equipped to communicate philosophy – “its form excludes the content” (7). He also suggests that since most political discourse happens on television that political philosophy (which isn’t amenable to digital media) takes a back seat to a candidate’s appearance since the language of television is largely visual and not typographical.

While Postman can sound like script-favoring luddite at times, I do wonder how much thought goes into our current uses of technology and how they alter or supplement a message simply by design. What is the rhetorical effect that a campaign speech has when it is broadcast on YouTube as opposed to printed in a political pamphlet or newspaper? Since Postman makes mention of it, what are the chances of an overweight politician becoming President now as opposed to when Taft ran for office? It seems that mediums necessarily act rhetorically insofar as they shift emphases (which they accomplish by design). A news story on television is often told with the reporter on scene and the oral “text” of the story provides a background narrative for the images which rule the day in a visual medium. The same story told on NPR or in the New York Times is going to necessarily rely less on images because of their limitations.

As I continue to think about new media and the growing world of social networks I think it is important to look at the forms these technologies take and content that users fill them with. Should we simply take a pragmatic stance on the form/content discussion or is there an ethical component to our technology usage? I often wonder how appropriate a space like Facebook is for serious conversations when it is designed to be in constant flux and indiscriminately mixes news with Farmville scores. Is Twitter going to be the next space for formal policy debates? President Obama[‘s social media staff] has weighed in on political issues in less than 140 words before, but in that case does the content match the form? Is that even a question that needs to be asked? I think it is.