Though many have already read this 25 year old book, I just recently finished Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death “. I need to write a full review of this book sometime, but for now I’m going to leave you with this cartoon a friend forwarded me this week. I can’t stop talking about this book — it has opened my eyes to a lot of different culture influences. This cartoon does a great job of summarizing some of Neil’s larger points as he compared the philosophies of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell.
One reply on “Amusing Ourselves to Death”
I enjoyed this book too! I would also recommend reading Postman’s other book called Technopoly. I had to read both for my undergrad and grad programs. Lots of good stuff in those books. Media Unlimited by Todd Gitlin is a good one too.
I guess the main take-away I had from the books is not that technology is bad, but that an open embrace of it without critically weighing out our losses and gains of accepting each piece of technology can be detrimental to us and our society.
Unfortunately, I fear that much of our world is currently doing that. We are drowning in an information gluttony and we LOVE all things technology, without really asking “what are we losing by accepting this technology?”
I wonder if we realize we have the option to say “no” to technology on some level…….or do we?