Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

by Neil Postman

Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.

Tufte and visualization!

In a print-culture, we are apt to say of people who are not intelligent that we must “draw them pictures” so that they may understand. Intelligence implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of concepts and generalizations.

I'm not so sure. I think Tufte would have some counter-arguments.

television can be used to support the literate tradition.

And so it can! Now, as I type this note on my iPad.

All of this has occurred simultaneously with the decline of America’s moral and political prestige, worldwide.

He had no idea how far we would devolve from Reagan, a movie star, to POTUS45, a reality show TV star.