Mike Rosenblum has been riffing over on his blog about Neil Postman and the U.S. presidential debates. Back in the day, Postman wrote 1980s media classic Amusing Ourselves to Death, which blames telegraphy for all our modern woes.
IMO, before the telegraph, information overload came in the the form of religious works (try reading the Bible over breakfast, making sense of it, and then using its precepts as a prompt for action – you’ll schism yourself before you’ve even reached the gospels).
Still, if you haven’t read Postman in a while, dig him out, if only for nuggets like this:
How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would otherwise not have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?
…most of our daily news in inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action … the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated by later technologies, made the relationship between information an action both abstract and remote.
For the first time in human history, people were faced with the problem of information glut, which means that simultaneously they were faced with the problem of a diminished social and political potency … For the first time, we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.
4 responses to “The wisdom of Neil Postman”
I think it is true that most information is curious rather than actionable. But it is also true that sufficient information forms an environment, or context, in which we can then receive actionable information. That is, we need to know lots before we can know which information is worth acting on. Unlike robots, we need context before instruction.
Yes Ron, but I think part of Postman’s point is that the incoherence of our information overload discourages context and makes a majority of the information we receive INactionable.
Nice post and blog, Adrian. Glad to find other Postman admirers out there. My live music video media critique “Thus Spoke The Spectacle” is influenced largely by his writings, and contains one video in particular (“Now…This”) influenced by and named after a chapter from “Amusing Ourselves To Death.” You can find it on the show’s website at http://thespectacle.net, or on YouTube at http://youtube.com/SpectacleShow. I’m interested in your feedback if you get a chance to have a look.
Eric
I was just thinking of Postman this week and wrote about him and Technopoly in my latest blog post on innovation and technology. ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ was the first good book I had read critiquing media post McLuhan – back in 1985.
Wondered what he’d make of Rupert Murdoch at the Wall St Journal and podcasting, blogging and social networks. He was ahead of his time.
@Eric – cheers, I’ll go look…sorry for the delay responding, been on hols.
@Jason – great blog. Funny, but when I read Postman in the 80s I wasn’t very impressed. I like him much more now – maybe I’m just getting old!