Postman vs Carr

After finishing The Shallows and Amusing Ourselves to Death, I couldn't help but notice the differences between the books even though they are both about the influence of technology.The writing styles of Carr and Postman share many similarities as they both talk about technology and it's affect on society. Both write in an intellectual style calling upon the reader’s developed vocabulary. However they both have unique styles of writing that I picked up while reading.

Postman wrote about technologies control over the media and society throughout his book in a chronological manner. He started with the use of smoke signals by the Native Americans and ended with the television used around the world. He uses various inventions to prove his point that technology changes society over and over again. In the last few chapters he is no longer writing in chronological order but is skipping from various topics that television has changed. He is able to do this because he has already narrated how man has developed it’s new favorite medium.

Carr writes about how technology affects the mind. Carr does not write in a chronological manner, but he does write about various inventions and how they start a mental shift. Carr writes of the past  but waits until the end of the chapter to connect it to the computer, making it easy to summarize his work by reading the last couple of pages of each chapter. Carr also writes using figurative language something Postman lacks totally. I believe this is because Carr is writing decades after Postman and we as an audience are reliant on figurative language.

Both books opened up my mind to technologies control over society. Even though Carr writes of the more recent technology that I use on a daily basis, I enjoyed Postman’s writing more because he narrated all of the mediums and each mental shift that came with new inventions.

Baron Barajas