24th December 2024
It would be interesting to know, if he was still alive, what Postman would make of the way the computer, and by extension the smartphone, has usurped the television as the primary means of news and media consumption, as well as entertainment, for a significant percentage of the western world, especially amongst the youth. In the final chapter he makes a dismissive comment that seems to indicate some foresight of what was to come;
Until, years from now, when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data have been of great value to large-scale organizations but have solved very little of importance to most people and have created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved.
It seems that the computer (in whichever form you choose) has resulted in some shift from video content back to the written word, at least in terms of news and some social media. It's also possible that consumption of the written word has diminished still further from when the book was written, but that the quantity of content has increased by such a volume that the diminished percentage is simply harder to notice. As the quantity of media continues to climb, so the quality of the of the vast majority of it plummets.
Postman bemoans the amount of time Americans spend staring at screens. It would probably be hard for him to believe that even more time is now spent staring at screens, but given that we've mostly traded large television screens for ones that fit in our pockets, that we can watch while at the dinner table with our families, on long journeys, while walking and even while sitting on the toilet, it seems clear that there were still plenty of screen-free hours in the day into which we've managed to pack plenty more screen time.
Who now takes up the mantle of championing more conscious consumption? The only one I'm aware of is Cal Newport. Are there others, or does he stand alone against the rising tide?
Unfortunately, many of the famous names that Postman uses to illustrate his examples are people I'm unfamiliar with. This could be partly down to the age of the book, or the fact they seem to be heavily America-centric. Although, as someone quite unfamiliar with "celebrity culture", it's entirely possible the examples could be re-written using their modern equivalents and I would be just as oblivious. Thankfully, not knowing who some of the people are does not preclude being able to follow the path of his argument.
In the same way that the personalities are mostly American, or at least western, so is the argument around whether we are moving towards living in a society more accurately described by Orwell or Huxley. The western world may be living in the world of the Feelies, Orgy Porgy and the Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy, but there are many societies around the world fighting to trade their Orwellian dystopia for a Huxleyan one. Given the choice between subjugation by pain and fear, vs entertainment and stupefaction, it isn't hard to see why. How instead do we find a third way, towards a society with a well-educated population, strongly involved in the running of their community, government and country? Given that this will require considerable amounts of work and that humans seem driven to make things easier, more comfortable and more convenient, the outlook doesn't seem hopeful.
