The more I read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death, the more I wonder what our future will become. In chapter 5, The Peek-A-Boo World, Postman explains how telegraphy and photography lack the understanding, analyzing, and questioning that writing does. A good example that ties into this would be the movie Idiocracy. I highly suggest that you watch this movie, but it is rated R, if that affects your decision or ability to watch it. With that in mind, I’ll give a summary of the movie.
Private Joe Bauers, an American of average intelligence, is a guinea pig for a top secret hibernation program by the Pentagon. After being put into hibernation, he is forgotten about and wakes up five centuries later. He discovers that as time went by, society’s intelligence levels drastically dropped and people needed everything explained for them. Baures quickly becomes the smartest man alive and tries to fix food shortages, pollution, and the crippled economy by doing simple tasks. In one case, the society lacked so much knowledge that they had been killing their plants by watering them with a sports drink.
Even though the accusation seems a little extreme, they started with the same tools we have, like television. As time goes on, television has affected our minds whether you address it or not. Do you think our world could become similar? Is this an exaggeration or could it actually become accurate?
Grace Goodwin
Grace Goodwin
Hi grace this movie sounds really interesting I am definitely going to try and watch it. You write that their is a relationship between chapter 5 and this movie, and I totally agree. When Postman wrote how telegraphy and photography was the precursor for the effects television had on people and that using an image as a form of communication has harsh consequences,or that telegraphy was used to spread information that was sometimes irrelevant to the people receiving the information. Those mediums made the irrelevant relevant and could lead to humans critical thinking diminishing
ReplyDeleteI think what Postman is trying to portray when he says that telegraphy and photography lack the same amount of understanding as written word is best explained by something Nicholas Carr says in the Shallows. He writes an anecdote about Friedrich Nietzsche and how his writing changed over time. He notes that when Nietzche began to use a type writer instead of longhand writing his language began to have a more staccato feel to it. In other words, while it's the same person writing it, the same thoughts, it has lost its essence. I believe that Postman is trying to portray is that a lot of things tend to be lost in translation when switching from medium to medium. I'm sure that as the society in Idiocracy got less and less smart everything important was lost in translation as they switched from medium to medium
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