A book review, of sorts.

I just finished reading Neal Postman's "amusing ourselves to death" and I have to say, it makes for an interesting read.

Postman draws some frightening parallels between the visions of Huxley and the reality of TV in the 80's. In short his insightful book describes how we turn off our thinking and turn on TV. Not even the most serious
documentary or news show round table discussion can be taken seriously because TV filters it through the lens of entertainment, right down to music that
dictates the mood. The viewer cannot refute an argument, make any kind of rebuttal, and TV likes it that way. Postman talks about TV co-opting everything:
politics, religion, serious thought and philosophy. It is a very bleak picture indeed, but very real and very accurate.

When I say "interesting read," this is not an implicit hint that the book is boring. It isn't. I just have some trouble swallowing the entire premise, or more accurately concerns raised by the premise. Why I say this is that while I believe television can be detrimental, I don't know how much it can truly "kill" our culture. I say this because as long as people like Mr. Postman feel the way they do, our culture is not dead...merely on life support. That said, things have come down the pike that I suspect Mr. Postman would not have found surprising, but didn't live to see happen. Here I am refering to the iPod and cell phones both of which allow us to view TV programming on them. As it is, I think iPods, cell phone features such as games and the ability to play mp3's, and other mp3 players are doing more to isolate us from each other than TV ever could. At least TV gives us something to talk about over the water cooler, or around the coffee machine. iPods, mp3 players and cell phones do not. They do the opposite; cut us off from each other and isolate us from the world around us.

I am not, by any means trying to invalidate Postman's point, but I think we've gone beyond TV into other realms that would make him shudder. In fact, I am inclined to agree with a lot of what Postman said. I also tend to agree with a vastly more famous reader of the book, Roger Waters. Waters was inspired by the book and wrote a concept album called "amused to death" in which (if I understand the overall premise) advanced aliens from outer space find our world as nothing more than burned out shells (emotionally and intellectually speaking) gathered around TV's and "amused to death."

There was a time when I believed that TV would possibly the culprit of such a death, but now I tend to lean towards the idea of becoming isolated by iPods and other forms of portable entertainment. It only gets worse, however, if TV programming (or the idea of TV itself) becomes integrated into that portable technology. I already see it happening.

Maybe Waters is right, and some "alien anthropologists" will declare, very sadly, "This species has amused itself to death!" Only time will tell.

Fascinating quiz.

I took this quiz and it labeled me as a "centrist." I don't claim to disagree, but want to check and see how accurate it really is. Meanwhile, what do you, my readers, think?
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html