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.
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