Extremely articulate and well formulated arguments

Great exposition on the difference between a written culture and a visual culture and how the latter is dumbing us down. Written in the 1980's but it's content and message is even more important today than ever!

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Interesting parallels from the 1980s to 2020

First off. Really fast and bad narration so much that I had to slow it down to listen to it.
Second, I didn't realise this was written in the early 80s (pre mass internet) and in part it's outdated.
However, Postman's points about evolving communication channels impacting how we consume information and it's (i)relevance are the parallels to mass media and the internet today where we've now become consumers of information that we take very little action on. It was also interesting to reflect on his arguments with the back drop to the American election!
Definitely needs updating though.

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Such a promising start

I was drawn to this book because of my own professional involvement with television. It is an interesting and relatively unusual field of application for applied psychology, but there is little empirical basis, specific theory and/or literature, so I hoped that Neil Postman's text would be useful. It starts by contextualising and grounding the subject in a convincing and articulate manner. The basic premise that Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World', offer a good comparative view and way of thinking about social and cultural influences, and makes sense, when considering the development, role and function of television. Postman precedents Huxley's dystrophic vision of the future and hence the title 'Amusing Ourselves to Death' and his justification for this is worth reading. However, the latter part of the book, which becomes increasingly like a piece of polemic against current educational and religious practice, is tedious, not well substantiated, and seems to infer a romantic and, overly idealised view of how things were pre-television. Also, some systemic thinking about society and television would not have gone amiss. After all, the two develop in interaction with each other and are mutually influential and reflective. In other words, surely the television we have and the role/s and function/s it fulfils are no coincidence, so demonising and aggrandising one is reductive and naive.

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good book, bad performance

it's got a lot of good points, still applicable even 30 years after its writing. the trouble is it's read by someone who sounds like a robot, reads too quickly, and often puts the emphasis in wrong places so sentences that should be jokes get read as serious.

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Still relevant

Applicable thinking today. The danger of entertainment similar to overeating. It will go wrong for us. And we think it’s just a bit of down time. Whoever puts it on our screens does it for a reason, which will have consequences for us.

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Brilliant writing at breakneck speed

An essay full of insight into how public discourse is shaped by the media form it's delivered in. It gives you some insight into the history of how we came to a place where a US presidential campaign can be won via Twitter. Written at a time when television dominated the home, it's given me cause to consider that how we think has changed in the decades following this book. What would Postman think of Twitter and Instagram? I would like to think that he could have seen these visual and intellectually trivial formats and thought up himself, 'yup, that's the way I thought we would go'. My review loses a star as the narration is far too fast, but if you can keep up, it's time will spent.

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Brilliant book read far too fast

Great ideas but they need to be digested. The fastest reader I have yet heard. I probably missed 70% of it

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Television:The Opium Of The People !

This book might have been written some 30 years ago,but what it says about television can equally (if not more so ) be applied to todays Multi Media Soma.A Brave New World,where you don't need to worry about climate change,war or anything negative in the "Real World".Because you can enter your own world of virtual reality and manage a virtual football team or like some kind of superman wipe out an entire enemy.
An excellent book,which makes you think about the world we live in today.A thing that might not always be "a laugh" or entertaining,but is necessary if we want a better world for all and have humankind progress.
Some reviews have complained about the narrators speed of reading,but I did'nt have a problem with this.All I would say is,this is the kind of book were to get its full meaning.You may need to run it back at times,or as I intend to do,listen to it again.

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A rare book that can actually change a view

A fantastic critique on the modern visual platform of social discourse. I won't bash the narrator because the recording is very old and the narrator is not a professional narrator but an eminent journalist and outhor. And, by the way, focusing on the performance of the narrator is precisely the point Neil Postman makes against TV and, in effect, the internet.

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1 person found this helpful

WOW!

A great author, fascinating topic, intellectually sound, heavy for some but a must read/listen. Enjoy!

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