Amusing Ourselves To Death - Chapter 11

Chapter 11 - The Huxleyan Warning

1. What are polemics?

2. What is a Marxist? People who believe that social change is going to happen from technology.

3. What does it mean to be "media conscious"? 

4. When was the alphabet invented?

5. Who is Roland Barthes?

REACTION:

Postman gets deep into the way technology has changed America. His focus is obviously on how television and media has changed us, but he also states how the automobile has changed our way of life. No matter what the new technology is, as long as it brings us some type of revenue, we can careless what the outcomes are. Such as giant cities, and deforestation. He states an amazing fact that people created these things seeing only the positives, and not taking the negatives into account...
This is actually weird because in international business I just learned what moral hazard is, and its when someone takes a does something and the risks are invisible to them because they feel so secure that absolutely nothing will go wrong. And if something was to go wrong, someone else can deal with it, or someone else will deal with it..not me. This is actually a huge problem because I have a natural mindset of looking at the positives and negatives in everything. Obviously most people do not think that way.
He states that our means of communication are a way bigger deal then our modes of transportation.

There is a quote by Nicholas Johnson that states " for no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are." This is a good point because television wouldn't be a negative thing if people weren't brainwashed and they could understand what was real and what is not. It has just got to the point that the media has too much control. Postman makes an amazing point that banning it will do nothing, but the only way people will stop watching tv is when they do it themselves. Just like anything, us as individuals have to realize something for us to take any type of action, and it has to be enough to make us want to do it. He said that we should create television programs that demonstrate how television ought to be viewed and it might help to make people realize that too much tv is a problem. Taking action through entertainment is the only way to make a point for anything, so we can also do it to encourage people to watch less tv by creating funny shows/ parodies, like saturday night live. The problem will end up taking care of itself. 
There is also the possibility of using education to control television by acknowledging schools to assist newer generations that tv really isn't all that important. I think it will do a lot of good if this was too happen and over the next few generations we might see improvement. Especially if it is in school, because everyone goes to school. I also thought it was a great idea to ban political commercials and any form of political discourse from television, because the control it has among society. 
I honestly really enjoyed this book.