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Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Discourse in the Age of Business," is a powerful book which reveals the negative and positive impacts technology and media has had on society, communication, and entertainment. Postman not only challenges his readers to recognize the cultural changes in society, as technology becomes a constant distraction from important matters in the world, but he also enforces and warns the readers to reassess the purpose of media and how it may lead them to stray
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I read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman as my First Quarter Book. Out of all the books I read this year I disliked this one the most. Postman's writing style didn’t appeal to me at all. It was tedious to read and I didn’t understand most of the references to current events that occurred prior to the book’s publication. However, Postman’s message could still be received by a less contemporary audience. The book could be described as an extensive argument essay. Postman’s argument centra
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This book contained good context and was very insightful. It is a good book for everyone to read because it contains interesting concepts on modern technology. The most intriguing aspect to this book was that Neil Postman wrote this book before technology truly became integrated in everyone's lives. I recommend this book to everyone because it can apply to everyone's daily lives. It can change the way we look at our daily lives and hopefully to spark a change. Although I enjoyed this book, it co
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This book to me was a little bit better than "Down and out in Paris and London." The point of the book is about how the advent of television influenced public discourse and politics. The book speaks at length about pre-television society in America, and how their worldview was different from a modern one. Postman states the hazardous effects television and technology plays on a society and pretty much how it can be a waste of time watching it. This book wasn't that bad to me. It was not the best
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This book was very informative and was sometimes entertaining for me to read. In order to enjoy it, you have to be very interested in technology and the effects it has on society. It was sometimes hard to understand because Postman is very intelligent and wrote with elevated diction. It was good to see how some people view the adverse effects of technology on society, and it showed me that I probably should not use technology as often as I do. If you want to read a book that provides you with a
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Throughout his book Postman explores multiple topics concerning the growing media and its effect on our society. Though his examples and discussion topics are very much outdated in today's world he writes in such a way that his general theme of the media dulling us into passivity is still delivered very effectively. Though it is a hard read, I would recommend this book to anyone with a passion for media or culture, so long as they also possess a long attention span, an open mind for foreign idea
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This book was a total wild card for me, nothing like anything I've ever read before, and it was really really really boring. I completely hated it. I agreed with a majority of the points Postman made and it was an extremely well-written book, but it was so dense and rambly that it took me forever to get through it. I picked this book on a whim to branch off from what I normally chose for these reports and I kind of regret that I did. It was an interesting concept and very true, but I did not lik
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This is a remarkably enlightening book. Personally, as a writer and reader, I enjoy learning about the ways in which others think. Neil Postman's book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" provides its audience with an interesting theory: technology, and more specifically television, is blissfully leading society to oppression. He does this by examining Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" which Postman saw as almost prophetic. If you are interested in politics, philosophy, or simply enjoy reading the opini
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Written in 1984 for the 21st century, Postman explains in depth George Orwell's prophecy about media's effect on our lives. This book was a fairly difficult read. Postman uses very sophisticated vocabulary, so be prepared to reread paragraphs and look up words. It is worth the effort to understand Postman's thought-provoking claims about the effects of television on society.
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I felt this is a good book because it relates to society today and how we are constantly just amusing ourselves through television and social media. Although it is good book, I felt it was sort of a difficult read because of the vocabulary used.
