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Essay #4
Introduction
Postman’s Technology and American Society Writing Talents Thirty years ago, an author predicted that the United States would steadily devolve in front of our eyes as we watched television. Amusing Ourselves to Death was written by Neil Postman to draw attention to how technology, particularly television, has become the primary source of knowledge in today’s culture. Postman’s audience was saddened to hear that people are being overwhelmed by technology because of the power of technology in the United States. For this reason, Postman created the last chapter of his book, in which he chastises people for spending their time watching television instead of doing other things.
We may infer from the text that one of the major themes is media. Amusing Ourselves to Death’s central issue is media, which seems almost needless to mention. In some ways, the media as a whole is more crucial to the novel than television alone, as one may make the case. Despite the book’s focus on television, Postman seems to be arguing that we must be conscious of the effect of media on our public discourse. The book’s first half is devoted to civilizations founded on literature and oratory, while the second half is almost exclusively dedicated to television. According to the author’s concluding chapter, we must become conscious of how media influences us to navigate the challenges provided by television. The concern is that the press dominates us when we should be in charge. There’s also a clear emphasis on the word “public.” Throughout the book, he avoids making brief comments regarding the public’s responsibility in its deception. It’s more like an argument that society as a whole is frequently powerless against the media metaphor that describes it. Similar to how the audience of Typographic America was taught to demand and comprehend complex sentences and dialectics, the people of the Age of Show Business are trained to look for amusement as the only method of dialogue. However, Postman does not directly compare ordinary citizens and corporations that one may claim to dominate the discourse for their benefit. Still, he suggests that the public is ultimately unable to resist the media’s influence. Even while he concedes that the proposals are likely to fail, he suggests that we may take action to improve our relationship with television in the last chapter. Therefore, in my own view, Postman’s projections have come true, given the nature of contemporary American media.
Body
Some younger students argue that Postman’s work is only relevant to an older generation. Despite this, its theory is still relevant in the Internet era, if not even improved upon CITATION Bea14 l 1033 (Gofron). For example, one might acquire three times as much knowledge in half the time as their parents could and yet not have any context to interpret it, which is doubly true on the Internet. Rather than allowing individuals to describe themselves accurately, the growth of social media has expanded their ability to market themselves as commodities or defined characters. Postman’s core thesis, that our conversation is oriented on entertainment, is easy to understand in an age OF downloadable media, and an ever-growing Internet punditry. However, one may argue that the Internet has brought us back to a print-based society. As a result, many people have started personal blogs in which they express themselves verbally and make arguments based on language and concepts. While television is a popular medium, the Internet’s media metaphor may be regarded as separate from television and not just as an implication of television.
It’s crucial to remember that the public is interested in opinion and analysis regarding difficult topics. The media also plays a significant role in providing information and research in such viewpoints and analyses. Concerns and issues have dogged the media’s development. The media has often been accused of mind control, bigotry, and poor quality. However, the advancement of communications technology has made it simpler than ever before for today’s customers to get more information. They may be local, national, or even global in scale. They may have a broad or a limited range. There is a plethora of options. The printed press was used to disseminate news to the general public in the past. As a result of the city’s high literacy rate and its desire for self-rule, Boston was an ideal place for establishing a newspaper, and in 1704 the city’s first continuous press was set up. American newspapers participated in the campaign to educate residents of British injustices and to encourage rebellion during the American Revolution. Daily newspapers appeared in major cities throughout the colonies as readership grew.
Postman thinks that before the invention of the printing press, cultural exchanges were reasonable, consistent, and logical. As a result of the influence of television, he claims, America has degenerated into something withered and ridiculous. Postman will make this assertion over and again. When it comes to textual culture, and the visual, McLuhan made a similar conclusion. Subsequently, Postman changes “primitive” to the more derogatory “absurd.” To illustrate this assertion, Postman provides the example of a western African tribe whose criminal justice system is heavily reliant on a judge’s capacity to recall hundreds of moral aphorisms. Judges look for practical aphorisms for crimes committed and decide on a proper course of action by the wisdom of these sayings.’ Postman points out that in an oral society, maxims may serve as a reliable source of knowledge. To illustrate a point, Postman tells the narrative of the ambiguous tribe in such a way as to create a comparison. His thesis is that media shapes our society. Thus, he begins by portraying a civilization that utilizes media considerably differently from America in the twentieth century.
On the other hand, Aphorisms are seen as a joke in print cultures like the United States. Postman shows this by envisioning a lawyer in a case who relies on aphorisms instead of evidence. As a result of our ability to write and record thoughts, we can depend on far lengthier texts and narratives to discern the truth. Writing, publishing, and disseminating a statement makes it more true than merely saying it. As a result, our epistemology, or theory of knowledge, or what divides knowledge from opinion, is determined by media, according to Postman. To put it another way, the media shapes our conception of what constitutes knowledge and truth.
Postman has previously discussed the effect of new media and technology on culture, but his primary focus is on how media shapes our ideas of knowledge. Postman thinks that a functioning American society requires a high degree of intelligence, intellectual seriousness, and logic CITATION JMv041 l 1033 (Laan). These qualities are linked to print media and are incompatible with visual media.
To put it another way, Postman claims that not all epistemologies are created equal. According to him, television-based epistemology has replaced print culture in the United States. Postman argues that we are becoming more absurd as a consequence of this change. To put it another way, since media shape what we know and how we know it, the move from print to television has a detrimental influence on our collective intelligence as a country.
The present condition may be compared to this example. Readership and advertising income have been steadily shifting away from newspapers and other media, most notably digital. The epidemic and subsequent slow economy harmed several traditional newspaper advertisers, such as retail, cinema, and promoting community activities, which had declined for some years. Several sectors have reduced their marketing spending, slowing down the drop in advertising income. With the advent of the internet, a new era of connectedness for corporations, organizations, and individuals began CITATION Eli17 l 1033 (Bonner). For news organizations, the internet was seen as a novel opportunity. Because it was the cheapest and quickest way to generate money, media companies increased their earnings by disseminating news through online outlets.
As a result, the number of individuals purchasing newspapers plummeted. People didn’t appear to care about reading news on paper any longer; it looked laborious and expensive. All of that has changed, though, thanks to the internet. Readers may now read an article without wasting paper or suffering paper cuts with a mouse click or a screen touch. However, there are both positive and negative causes for the collapse of newspapers. In recent years, many journalists have been taken aback by the fall in readership. Postman’s prophecies, in my opinion, have come to pass because of the demise of print media.
In journalism study, epistemology is a major concern. Journalism is one of the most important public knowledge sources in today’s society because of its reputation for consistently disseminating timely, accurate, and verifiable information CITATION Mat20 l 1033 (Carlson). Epistemology is concerned with the process by which journalists and news organizations learn to know what they know and how they defend their knowledge claims CITATION Ale07 l 1033 (Tanesini). As a journalistic fact-finder, I believe social epistemology may be a useful new knowledge paradigm that both academics and journalists can agree upon. Both biases and failures in knowledge acquisition are well-understood in social epistemology, which focuses on optimal practices for knowledge acquisition and truth-seeking. Our social epistemological method offers a clear way to adjudicate factual concerns, while current journalism studies have focused on journalists’ reluctance to do so.
The study of knowledge, or epistemology, is concerned with how we come to know what we do and why we believe we know what we think we do. Epistemology is, therefore, not a surprise in journalism study. One of the most important sources of information in contemporary life is journalism. About epistemological issues, current journalism is changing. Despite this, journalism is often linked with lofty assertions that it consistently delivers authoritative, reliable, and verifiable information about current events. From the first studies of news and journalism to the present day, questions about news as a distinct sort of knowledge and the standards and methods utilized in the processing and justification of information have regularly been on the agenda. Journalism studies also examine how specific news items and journalists’ roles as authoritative truth-tellers are justified from an audience standpoint. A journalist’s capacity to provide fact-based news and for viewers to believe that the information is trustworthy is critical to the profession’s authority and credibility. This pertains to epistemology’s central component: the justification of knowledge assertions. When journalists proclaim that they have unmatched access to material worth listening to, their authority is based only on audience acceptance or rejection of these statements.
Academic interest in the conditions for trust in news media and the abilities and efforts required of the public to verify news has increased in recent years, owing to the current debates about “fake news.” It is possible that the common beliefs about facts and sources and verification techniques will be modified by structural circumstances, technical affordances, and working routines inside various companies as a result of sociological discoveries. It’s not a simple matter of adapting to a new environment. Professional disputes arise as a result of changes inside and outside the media. As a result of digital and social media, journalism and news creation have become more diverse. A systematic comparative study is essential to learn more about the general characteristics of epistemologies and the varying circumstances and specificities of various journalistic genres.
Studying how people verify information from various sources should also be a part of the research. Theoretical and empirical research should also be carried out to examine the role of journalism and the validity of news knowledge in various social, cultural, and political situations CITATION Tim171 l 1033 (Cigelske).
When it comes to defining terms like epistemology, Postman goes into great into. According to Chapter 1, our concept of truth is heavily influenced by our tools to acquire it. He reaffirms this notion in Chapter 2. He uses the phrase resonance, which he credits to academic Northrop Frye, to further his argument. It is only when a sentence makes sense outside of its context that it achieves “resonance.” In addition, Postman addresses Socrates’ trial. Rhetoric was not regarded as an accessory to truth but rather how it was conveyed, and Socrates apologizes for his lack of preparation in his introductory statement. To them, eloquence and order were more than just a way to arrange truth; they were the mechanism by which they came to understand something to be true. Socrates was judged guilty because he did not seek to frame his case in what Athenians would have deemed an honest way when he spoke spontaneously and without preparation.
Conclusion
Through all this, we should understand that epistemology, a branch of philosophy concerned with how we perceive and apply truth, is a complex topic that does not need a thorough understanding to grasp Postman’s point. An individual or society’s understanding of truth is what Postman is referring to when he uses the word “postmodernism.” Some individuals think that seeing is believing, while others believe in what they can feel. The first individual relies on visual evidence, but the second needs a tangible object to substantiate his claims. Using this simple principle, Postman extends it to society. If you live in an oral culture, you have no option but to accept the veracity of proverbs. If they’ve been around for so long, they must be true. It doesn’t matter whether something is rational or not. Oral culture has no option but to rely on verbal communication. As there is no alternative, they have to define reality based on their available technology. ‘ A written choice appeared in history, and society came to rely on the written word as the source of truth as a result of the advancements in writing. Speech suddenly became a dubious source of reality due to its reckless, spontaneous character. For example, we consider non-fiction writing to be a truthful reflection of the author’s innermost ideas.
When it comes to truth, we tend to believe that the written word is more reliable than other forms of communication because of its nature. Even while one might make the case that words said when intoxicated reflect an honest portrayal of oneself while written words show a more restrained and thoughtful one, our culture does not perceive it that way. We have been influenced by the medium of writing to believe that written language is the most reliable source of information. Having a rudimentary understanding of this argument can help you comprehend the epistemology of the image-based television culture.
Insightful complaints against being identified as an opponent from the outset. He begins this theoretical chapter by extolling the virtues of trash television and concludes it with three counterarguments. He has to show that he accepts the presence of exceptions and advantages and that he does not hate TV as a whole. As a result, instead of focusing on the actual content of television, he prefers to focus on its metaphor and how it shapes our conversation.
Works Cited
Bonner, Elizabeth, and Chris Roberts. “Millennials and the Future of Magazines: How the Generation of Digital Natives Will Determine Whether Print Magazines Survive.” Journal of Magazine Media, vol. 17, no. 2, 2017.
Carlson, Matt. “Journalistic Epistemology and Digital News Circulation: Infrastructure, Circulation Practices, and Epistemic Contests.” New Media & Society, vol. 22, no. 2, 2020, pp. 230–46.
Cigelske, Tim. “Politics and Culture: Are We Amusing Ourselves to Death?” Journal of Media Ethics, vol. 32, no. 3, 2017, pp. 181–83.
Gofron, Beata. “School in the Era of the Internet.” Educación y Educadores, vol. 17, no. 1, 2014, pp. 171–80.
Laan, J. M. van der. “Neil Postman and the Critique of Technology (In Memory of Neil Postman Who Died on October 5, 2003).” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, vol. 24, no. 2, 2004, pp. 145–50.
Tanesini, Alessandra. “Contemporary Debates in Epistemology ? Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa (Eds).” The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 227, 2007, pp. 303–06.
