Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman

Recently, for one of my college courses, I was assigned to read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. In this book, Postman explores the decline of typography and the rise of television. In other words, how we are reading fewer books and watching more television. Postman claims that it is not what we hate that ruins us, but what we love that ruins us. He correctly predicted (when the book was written in 1985) that the American people would quickly adopt television into their daily lives without too much thought as to what the consequences of this might have on their lives. The way media and culture fit together is a concept that Neil Postman unpacks extensively in the book. He argues that culture doesn’t influence the media, but rather media influences the culture. This can be a very dangerous predicament if the media we are consuming is not something we want to be prevalent in our culture.

Many years after Amusing Ourselves to Death was written, we see Neil Postman’s predictions about the effects of television being fulfilled. He correctly predicted how television would negatively affect American culture. Postman’s lament of the decline of typography and the rise of television is being realized as the American public continues to become more and more captivated by what we see on television rather than what we read. This has and will continue to affect the American culture in the years to come, as Postman predicted it would. Amusing Ourselves to Death is constantly referenced by many other authors and speakers because of how it comprehensively unpacks the transition from the written to image-based culture. I highly recommend this book because it is very eye-opening and insightful. You can buy it here.