Posted on 04/11/2023 8:51:29 AM PDT by babylon_times
One of the most influential books of my life is the book Amusing ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
This is a must read by any who would call themselves an intellectual or a thinking person.
The book discusses how the medium is the message, and how the form of communications which we utilize greatly impact the information that is being transposed.
Postman goes on to bemoan the negative impacts of television, radio, and the telegraph on society (all before the Internet and the smartphone).
The progression from books to newspapers to radio to television to the internet and now to social media have changed how we operate.
We are being dumbed down.
The critical thought of those in a society based on the written word are long gone — we are living in an age of imagery. A global society swayed by the images on a screen and the visual effects on the devices surrounding us...
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
bkmk
I’ve learned over the decades that when I am talking to someone, I am talking to their TV/movie images of the topic or the people who are the subject of that talk.
If Indians come up, or 1950s America, or women in the military, they are seeing images from the screen in their heads, they aren’t mentally searching text or books they have read and the images are usually the opposite of what I am trying to explain, and almost impossible to replace with more real mental pictures from discussion.
It is hard to beat those drilled in movie/TV show visions of history and existence.
Imagery ended the British Empire.
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