Postman's Distiction

In the last paragraph of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman makes the distinction between thinking and laughing. He says that people do not know what they are laughing at and do not know why they have stopped thinking. This distinction matters because it shows how the decline in the age of typography has really affected us. Instead of thinking while doing any activity, such as watching TV, we just sit there and veg. We become entertained by the littlest and unimportant shows and ideas that we become ignorant to what is really going on around us. The rise in the age of television has made us unaware of what is going on in the world and stop caring about important things.

Not talking Friday

On Friday it was very hard not to talk. I wanted to talk so bad and I did not realize how much I did talk in school. Before Friday, I thought it was going to be easy because I do not talk a lot in school, but I was very wrong. Whenever I tried to draw something on the board people got confused and did not know what I was saying. I tried explaining but they had no idea. Sometimes people would ask me a question and they would say “Oh, never mind you can’t talk.” At the end of the day when I could finally talk my one friend came up to me and asked me if I was mad at him because all I did was smile when he said something. I tried explaining but he did not know but at the end of the day he understood. People get a very different message when you cannot talk.

Postman on Youtube

In the video, Neil Postman mentions many quotes and arguments that define our world today. He says that, “All our inventions are an improved means to an unimproved end.” People in our society are always looking for new inventions and the “coolest” new idea. We get sick of our old electronics because the new ones can do more, even if it is a very subtle change in the inventions. We always want something bigger and better. In Chapter 1 of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman mentions the use of smoke signals. He says that they were once used as a way of communication, but today we just use simpler ways to communicate and all have become lazy. Today, people still have conversations with each other but are almost always texting or doing something else at the same time. We cannot get rid of communicating with speech because we will all become like clones and have a decrease on intelligence and interaction.

Neil Postman mentions in the video that we have all become like clones. We all do the same things, and worry about the same ideas such as appearance and acceptance. He says, “Those without camera appeal are excluded from addressing the public about what is called the news of the day.  Those with camera appeal can command salaries exceeding one million dollars a year.” Everyone today is always worried about how they look and do not focus on the real things that matter. We always hope people accept us by the way we dress, the way we look, or the physical objects we have. None of those things are important and by the decline of typography, we always experience television telling us how to act. People get paid to act a certain way and look a certain way. We should be focusing on people’s personalities and they was they act, not what the latest trend is.