Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death


History of Media in America
Education for your Edification

Peace Revolution Podcast #25

By: Neil Postman

Download: MP3
Right Click, save target as.


Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
(1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman.

The book's origins lie in a talk Postman gave in 1984. He was participating in a panel on Orwell's 1984 and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's 1984, where they were oppressed by state control.

Invitation link to the Tragedy and Hope online community

Neil Postman (1931 — 2003) was an American critic and educator. Postman received his B.S. from the State University of New York at Fredonia and his M.A. and Ed.D. from Columbia University. He was the Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology at New York University and chair of the Department of Culture and Communication. His pedagogical and scholarly interests included media and education, as can be seen in many of his seventeen books, including Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), and End of Education (1995). Postman died in 2003.

No comments: