Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves To Death Analysis

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Societies often look to past writers and thinkers to establish what current thinking should and will be. Often there are authors who are ahead of their time or whose work can be relevant and applicable to situations they could have never dreamed of during their own life time. One example of this is Neil Postman. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman asserts that, “Every medium of communication…has resonance…it directs us to organize our minds and integrate our experience of the world, it imposes itself on our consciousness and social institutions in myriad forms” (Postman 18). In other words, however you choose to communicate, the communication will have significance, it will affect the mind and become a part of society in multiple ways. Postman wrote his book …show more content…
According to Postman, “Epistemology is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned with the origins and nature of knowledge. The part of its subject matter that is relevant here is the interest it takes in definitions of truth and the sources from which such definitions come” (Postman 17). Epistemology is an intricate topic dealing with how knowledge came into being and its makeup. What is important is the meaning of truth and where ideas about what truth really is coming from. In Postman’s time he argued that epistomology was coming from the television and what was being broadcast. Today there is not only television but multiple other souces that are providing us with the content that is shaping our lives. The Internet, social media, texting, and all other forms of modern comunication are shaping modern epistomology just like television used to do in Postman’s time. Today’s culture is bombarded with content. With these current distractions, how is what true and knowlegable for today sorted out from what is not important? The meaning and deep thought are getting lost in the entertainment
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