Chapter 7 - "Now...This"
1. What is verisimilitude?
2. What is the ad hominem argument?
3. What is introspection?
4. Who is George Orwell?
5. Who is Aldous Huxley and how did he predict that people would begin to be amused into indifference?
REACTION:
Postman begins chapter 7 discussing how we direct our attention to one story and it is very serious or dramatic and then it immediately changes to something completely different. Implementing the "Now...This" action. He talks about how music is always played in the background of movies, news, stories, commercials, any content really. Apparently it is soothing and makes the visual more appealing because the music is subconsciously comforting.
The reason film and television is so effective is because it proves itself. When humans see things for themselves, it holds immediate truth. When heard or told by someone or something we have a harder time believing it.
It also surprises me how we don't think badly about television when it informs us of terrible news and then is immediately interrupted by a irrelevant commercial. If people would do that in conversation or even in a movie, we usually skip through them or get annoyed. But television is live and controlled and we are almost hypnotized by it. Until they made the DVR but that is a little advanced for this book.
Television turned into a way of altering information that they provide people. He uses the example of disinformation which means information with the intent to mislead. They are completely aware that they are feeding us misleading information, but they see nothing wrong with doing it. That is definitely not okay. When they create news in a form of entertainment, it messes with our head because normally when you have something bad happened to you, you are sad about it. The news isn't there to make you sad, its there to inform you. For what? It is usually situations that happen so far away from your home location and has literally no affect on you whatsoever. Postman addresses a valid question of "what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?" It sounds like a plague to me.
Hypocrisy also is becoming a huge problem, because we are educated by schools and by parents, if our parents at all, we learn one thing but at the same time are learning from schools and the media the complete opposite. People who don't have parents, only learn from the media and it is totally conforming our society.
Television is also like a media parent. It's content is so hypnotizing and popular and has such high success rates, other forms of media are trying to incorporate means that television does to be just as successful.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Amusing Ourselves To Death - Chapter 6
Chapter 6 - The Age of Show Business
1. What is the difference between television as a technology and a medium?
2. What is so significant or different about American television?
3. Where is the best photography in the world displayed?
4. What is a ventriloquist?
5. Why did the create the genesis project?
REACTION:
Postman is trying to explain and understand how television is so much different in American than in other countries. The technology of the television is the same everywhere, but the mediums or the messages are totally different. For some reason in America, tv really picked up in popularity and in other countries they could only get a tv and get one channel so there was really no point. In America however, people were glued to the tv by programs and advertisements. But the actual issue here is other countries were beginning to want to watch American programs. The demand was so high it was causing commotion among the people who were following the shows and it was concluded that not America was loved, but American television was loved worldwide. It wasn't just America who was hypnotized. He talks about how the longest picture that we view is a max of 3.5 seconds. The picture is constantly changing, exactly what our brain is attracted to. Change.
America has became devoted to providing the audience with entertainment. That is not exactly the problem that we are being provided with entertaining subjects, but that all the subjects are turned into entertainment, even if they are a very negative story. This is what brings up a ton of controversy on tv.
Postman also brings up that when people are watching tv, it doesn't give them time to comprehend what they just saw or think about it at all. The message is immediately gone and directed towards another medium and it is just forgotten. This proves that tv is just mindless, useless, media. He states how people are no longer engaging in conversations they are just engaging in a tv. No one talks to each other anymore, they just entertain each other. He says that no one exchanges ideas anymore, they just exchange images. I completely agree with that. I think that media has created a new form of selfish on today's society. It has created it in a way that is almost impossible to understand or even fix. People's dependency on one another has grown so much because we had other means besides our parents to look up too. Celebrities, criminals, pastors, actors, politicians, teachers, basically everyone who was famous on the television. Parents were slowly but surely getting there job taken away from them by the media. People began to grow confidence and trust for tv naturally and it is honestly unknown why. A wise comment he states is that the nature of our discourse is changing as the line between what is show business and what is not becomes harder to see with each passing day.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Amusing Ourselves To Death - Chapter 5
Chapter 5 - The Peek-a-Boo World
1. Who's idea was it to have country wide news??
2. What did Thoreau mean when he said telegraphy was making relevance irrelevant?
3. What does photography mean? Writing with light.
4. Why did the crossword puzzle become so popular?
5. What is the difference between a telegraph and a television.
REACTION:
It is interesting how they refer to tv as an annihilation of space. The amount of information we are fed daily usually does not alter our daily plans and lives whatsoever because it has nothing to do with us. So what is the point of even having it? All of the information we are fed help us create our opinions on our world problems and clutter our head with this information, that we can do absolutely nothing about. News is pointless unless it is in your demographic. This is funny because I have actually quit watching tv because it is mind numbing and a waste of time for me. I would watch the news or a tv show and just be like what am I doing? The purpose of the telegraph was to move information at a fast pace and over a broad area. Quality of the content just became less and less important, and now our society is almost hypnotized by it.
Language is the basis of all means of public communication and discourse, so photographs and telegraphy were very hard to accept because the only words it they had were what you remembered from the broadcast or what you interpreted it as.
The only way to live is in the present, but photography causes us to live in the past and the future. Seeing became the basis of believing instead of reading, and it revolutionized the human race. Photographs now provide context and content for something that you write. It almost makes the words come alive, and have even more meaning.
They compare tv to the game peek-a-boo because events pop in view for a moment then leave but when they are there they are somehow entertaining. But we overlook the fact that everything that happens on tv we think is the truth. And when things our visual, it just makes it that much more believable.
People were able to predict the revolution of media 50 years ago and were very accurate, so it is very interesting to see if today's predictions will be correct.
1. Who's idea was it to have country wide news??
2. What did Thoreau mean when he said telegraphy was making relevance irrelevant?
3. What does photography mean? Writing with light.
4. Why did the crossword puzzle become so popular?
5. What is the difference between a telegraph and a television.
REACTION:
It is interesting how they refer to tv as an annihilation of space. The amount of information we are fed daily usually does not alter our daily plans and lives whatsoever because it has nothing to do with us. So what is the point of even having it? All of the information we are fed help us create our opinions on our world problems and clutter our head with this information, that we can do absolutely nothing about. News is pointless unless it is in your demographic. This is funny because I have actually quit watching tv because it is mind numbing and a waste of time for me. I would watch the news or a tv show and just be like what am I doing? The purpose of the telegraph was to move information at a fast pace and over a broad area. Quality of the content just became less and less important, and now our society is almost hypnotized by it.
Language is the basis of all means of public communication and discourse, so photographs and telegraphy were very hard to accept because the only words it they had were what you remembered from the broadcast or what you interpreted it as.
The only way to live is in the present, but photography causes us to live in the past and the future. Seeing became the basis of believing instead of reading, and it revolutionized the human race. Photographs now provide context and content for something that you write. It almost makes the words come alive, and have even more meaning.
They compare tv to the game peek-a-boo because events pop in view for a moment then leave but when they are there they are somehow entertaining. But we overlook the fact that everything that happens on tv we think is the truth. And when things our visual, it just makes it that much more believable.
People were able to predict the revolution of media 50 years ago and were very accurate, so it is very interesting to see if today's predictions will be correct.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Amusing Ourselves To Death - Chapter 4
Chapter 4 - The Typographic Mind
1. What were the main focuses of Lincoln and Douglas's speeches?
2. How do we know that all written content is true information?
3. Is everyone capable of the analytical management of knowledge?
4. Does written information have more of a positive affect on society or negative?
5. Is speech or written context more believable to the average person?
REACTION:
Chapter 4 starts out as a summary of the way Lincoln and Douglas influenced the modern day people by having lengthy, public, political arguments. They would go on for hours at a time responding to each other and describing each of their own views. A total session would be close to 7 hours which is quite unheard of today. They didn't speak highly of themselves or others, but used their knowledge in their dialogue to influence the audience to just simply listen to understand both of their speeches, instead of just following their passion. Douglas basically said that it was important for them to understand and be silent reflective leaders to what he was saying. Back then before the media had photos, videos and pictures and even TV, content really was king. In this case, this is oral content, so it is even harder for people to understand and a lot of information to even remember. They might only remember certain key points, but the amount of personalities that are present, cause them to all find different topics memorable to themselves. Postman explains that ideas that are presented in print are a lot more likely for people to talk about because no one has to take the time to remember it, they can reread it as many times as they want. We tend to feed off written and printed content, but how do we know that it is true information?
When writers write, they are just writing their ideas that are going on in their brain. When we read their ideas, most of us have several different ways of interpreting it. We may not comprehend what they were trying to say, and because it is in print and non-verbal, it is less emotional. Postman says that readers start to make mistakes when they don't notice what someone is trying to say, or even worse, don't care.
The documentations of religion started to become of high controversy among the larger political leaders like Thomas Paine. People were starting to severely hate on it and people began preaching and moving people like never before. This is an example of people needing that hope. A preacher Henry Coswell stated " religious mania is said to be the prevailing form of insanity in the United States." Apparently the organization of churches, which caused the formation of a group of people to learn, influenced the form of higher education in America.
When forming our judicial system, they used to create positions regarding that the law must not be a merely learned profession, but a liberal one. That is definitely something that has faded away today. I feel like we are just stuck on the old ways, and are moving at a sloth's pace to change. Our constitution was not just acquired out of a textbook, it was formulated by expansive minds. Advertising was full of descriptive context and wasn't successful, because apparently the public could not understand. So basically they had to dumb down the adds so the common people could understand. When what they should have done is just let people figure it out for themselves or by word of mouth. This movement induced photographs and slogans. It wasn't making people understanding anymore, it was about the psychology techniques they used to attract a broader audience for making more money. People used to remember people by things that they said, now we only remember their faces.
We get tested on reading comprehension today, but in the 18th and 19th century that would have been an absurd thought, because all they did when they read was comprehend. 100% of their focus was on the book, now it is taken for granted. When the TV was invented, a revolution of events was about to change the Typographic mind forever.
1. What were the main focuses of Lincoln and Douglas's speeches?
2. How do we know that all written content is true information?
3. Is everyone capable of the analytical management of knowledge?
4. Does written information have more of a positive affect on society or negative?
5. Is speech or written context more believable to the average person?
REACTION:
Chapter 4 starts out as a summary of the way Lincoln and Douglas influenced the modern day people by having lengthy, public, political arguments. They would go on for hours at a time responding to each other and describing each of their own views. A total session would be close to 7 hours which is quite unheard of today. They didn't speak highly of themselves or others, but used their knowledge in their dialogue to influence the audience to just simply listen to understand both of their speeches, instead of just following their passion. Douglas basically said that it was important for them to understand and be silent reflective leaders to what he was saying. Back then before the media had photos, videos and pictures and even TV, content really was king. In this case, this is oral content, so it is even harder for people to understand and a lot of information to even remember. They might only remember certain key points, but the amount of personalities that are present, cause them to all find different topics memorable to themselves. Postman explains that ideas that are presented in print are a lot more likely for people to talk about because no one has to take the time to remember it, they can reread it as many times as they want. We tend to feed off written and printed content, but how do we know that it is true information?
When writers write, they are just writing their ideas that are going on in their brain. When we read their ideas, most of us have several different ways of interpreting it. We may not comprehend what they were trying to say, and because it is in print and non-verbal, it is less emotional. Postman says that readers start to make mistakes when they don't notice what someone is trying to say, or even worse, don't care.
The documentations of religion started to become of high controversy among the larger political leaders like Thomas Paine. People were starting to severely hate on it and people began preaching and moving people like never before. This is an example of people needing that hope. A preacher Henry Coswell stated " religious mania is said to be the prevailing form of insanity in the United States." Apparently the organization of churches, which caused the formation of a group of people to learn, influenced the form of higher education in America.
When forming our judicial system, they used to create positions regarding that the law must not be a merely learned profession, but a liberal one. That is definitely something that has faded away today. I feel like we are just stuck on the old ways, and are moving at a sloth's pace to change. Our constitution was not just acquired out of a textbook, it was formulated by expansive minds. Advertising was full of descriptive context and wasn't successful, because apparently the public could not understand. So basically they had to dumb down the adds so the common people could understand. When what they should have done is just let people figure it out for themselves or by word of mouth. This movement induced photographs and slogans. It wasn't making people understanding anymore, it was about the psychology techniques they used to attract a broader audience for making more money. People used to remember people by things that they said, now we only remember their faces.
We get tested on reading comprehension today, but in the 18th and 19th century that would have been an absurd thought, because all they did when they read was comprehend. 100% of their focus was on the book, now it is taken for granted. When the TV was invented, a revolution of events was about to change the Typographic mind forever.
SuperBowl 2014 - Favorite Commercial
Diet Mountain Dew - Dale Call
This commercial was by far my favorite. It consisted of two duck hunters sitting out by a pond and one of the guys used a duck call and no ducks came. Then the other guy pulled out a thing that was green and look like a race car, and the other guy goes what is that? And he goes "its my Dale call". And he blows it and Dale Jr.'s car appears racing out of nowhere, does a doughnut and stirs up all the ducks right over to the guys. Diet Mountain Dew sponsors his car. Then the other guy goes "thats way better than my duck call." Then the slogan was "if your on a diet of takin it up a notch, drink diet dew".
Here is the link for the commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5GJi19q-Aw
This commercial was by far my favorite. It consisted of two duck hunters sitting out by a pond and one of the guys used a duck call and no ducks came. Then the other guy pulled out a thing that was green and look like a race car, and the other guy goes what is that? And he goes "its my Dale call". And he blows it and Dale Jr.'s car appears racing out of nowhere, does a doughnut and stirs up all the ducks right over to the guys. Diet Mountain Dew sponsors his car. Then the other guy goes "thats way better than my duck call." Then the slogan was "if your on a diet of takin it up a notch, drink diet dew".
Here is the link for the commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5GJi19q-Aw
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