In the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” the thought that submergence in what we love will take to our terminal is presented and analyzed. After reading this book I took it upon myself. as portion of a category assignment. to travel 24 hours without media.
Initially I believed that this would be an easy undertaking but found that as a whole we are surrounded by media in every case of our lives. From auto drives. to merely walking around my house I had to be observant to avoid media that would reset my 24 hr clip frame.
In Postman’s book. “Amusing Ourselves to Death” . he reflects on how the telecasting brings households to the same room but creates separation between them.
In my clip without media I spent two repasts with my household ( a tiffin and dinner ) . At both of these assemblages my household talked much more than we normally did. While watching telecasting we would “shush” each other to hear the show. but without it we discussed school. political relations.
and contentions such as legalising weed. Looking back at this I see Postman’s point. We become so focussed on the narrative turn uping out in forepart of us that we block out each other in the procedure.I besides noticed the same consequence when I was driving with my gramps that dark. He needed to present a present to household and I needed drive hours. so I drove the hr and a half thrust. I wasn’t allowed to touch the wireless because of my media break so we talked for that clip. I found out that my close gramps.
whom I see five times a hebdomad. has terrible mortise joint job and was traveling to acquire intervention subsequently that hebdomad. I like to believe I’m near to my household. but this happening without me even cognizing about it struck a chord in me. How much do we truly know about our loved 1s? What merely hasn’t come up because we spend our clip larning about the new famous person crazes or who wore what where?As I’m sitting here listening to the wireless while composing this I have to reflect on Postman’s ideas of how intertwined our universe is with media. As he put it.
President Taft wouldn’t have been voted into office in today’s universe because less people would vote for person that overweight. By this Postman means to indicate out how media has touch our lives. Not being able to utilize my cell phone to name people or watch the intelligence on telecasting. shrivel my universe to what I could see. hear. and touch around me. I spent most of my clip in my room reading books to go through the clip. and when I did go forth my room I merely saw my household room.
kitchen. and a small outside.We rely on telecasting.
wireless. and other media to convey us information. But. what is ne’er a given is that the information beginnings we depend on aren’t biased. When sentiments disguised as “facts” are viewed without any analysis and taken at face value. we are merely making Sue do sentiments that aren’t even ours.
This influence in our lives non merely emphasizes rifts in ideals. but besides can give groups the power to distort information and mislead others. Possibly we are non merely “Amusing Ourselves to Death” but Amusing Ourselves to the Death of Ourselves.When I was in in-between school up till 8th class I had a friend who used to watch BBC all the clip as a kid. I remember inquiring him about his address forms.
and him stating me that he even used to hold a British speech pattern! I can besides associate to these ideas. When I was smaller I used to talk utilizing sentence structure that wasn’t really normal. This was because I used to be really sheltered and non acquire out much. Sesame Street was one of my favourites as a kid. Communication accomplishments have to be developed like anything else.
with pattern. When I wasn’t exposed to people speaking casually. I developed a manner of speech production that didn’t tantrum with the people around me. This is a premier illustration of Postman’s point. We as a new coevals can’t communicate like we should be able to. Technology has stripped us of that. When most childs get don’t know what to state following in a state of affairs. the cheque their phones.
This is a good illustration of our trust on media and engineering and shows our subconscious dependance on these devices.When you turn to your telecasting tonight who or what do you see? What do you larn? What human interaction do you take part in? Postman references in his book how through telecasting we learn to interact with people. But. these people we learn how to interact with don’t act like existent worlds do.
They are histrions. their organic structure motions and word phrasing has been planned out and put measure by measure for them. This means that those histrions we learn to interact with. and habits we gain don’t help us to speak to people face to confront. While interrupting from media I thought approximately this at a point.In drumhead I believe the clip I spent without media allowed me to see through Postman’s lens. The idea that the media we love so in a heartfelt way is easy destructing us may look absurd at first. but when farther analyzed has ground to stand on.
We gain societal accomplishments. intelligence. sentiments. prejudice.
and a cardinal meeting topographic point for a household from media. Are these good or bad? Does this media act upon our life to the point that it is the chief factor we all cleaving to? We have to guard ourselves against the negative effects of this engineering so we are non used. That doesn’t mean we cut ourselves off from it wholly. If we do that than we are shriveling our universe position to that which we can see ourselves. Like everything else in life we must take new media in proportion. with a clear head.
If so we may be able to avoid “Amusing Ourselves to Death” .
