Quick Quote

Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it. Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplisitic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves. (pg. 141)

In a lot of ways this statement serves as Postman’s thesis and I would call it somewhat naïve if it weren’t written 36 years ago. There are plenty of genres on television that lend themselves to complex, substantive information (as I’ve suggested before), and I’ve heard “Previously on Mad Men” far too many times to grant that all television is nonhistorical and noncontextual, but at the same time I can’t help but apply this critique, even if only in part, to tools like Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps Facebook will, at some point in the future, be able to mediate different genres like television does now (though I doubt Twitter will ever effectively mediate political debates, class lectures, and the like). If anything, my critiques of Postman and appreciation for so much of what is good about television has made me tread a bit more tentatively in my criticisms of Facebook – although I still think many of my concerns are still legitimate.

This is not to say that Postman doesn’t raise some important points. I still think more thought could be put into the form/content discussions (or, at the most basic level, that these conversations should happen). Nicholas Carr has offered an updated critique in the vein of Postman with his book, The Shallows, and I think where there are points of intersection between Postman and Carr, Postman’s questions still merit answers.

Now for a bit of (ironic) fun: Pixar animations could stand as the biggest objection to many of Postman’s concerns about important cultural conversations taking place through digital mediums – especially when they so vividly paint (and implicitly critique) a Postman/Huxleyan hybrid future. I should also note that this video will have even more relevance when I talk about frictionless experiences later.