I have finished Amusing Ourselves to Death, and I find it fascinating how Neil Postman was able to predict and apply what would happen to our society as technology became more advanced. All of the points that Postman mentioned in his book has relevance to today's society. The media and television has altered our perspective on how we view everything. From watching the television about supposedly educational matters, the TV has made it so that actual teaching isn't enjoyable unless the teacher is funny or there are a lot of visuals that are incorporated into the lesson. Additionally, Postman mentions that, due to the media, politicians only need to put up a presentable front on-screen, regardless of how they act in reality, as long as they can gain approval from the audience based on how they are on television.
The television has affected everything, to the point everything displayed on it is simply show business. Postman says, "...We are in a race between education and disaster" (163). This here I find to be accurate because nowadays people use technology for the simplest of tasks. As that technology increases, our dependence on them also increases. What we view on the television, we apply that to everyday life. In the last sentence of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman says that Huxley "was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking" (163). The television and internet has become more integrated into our daily lives. Because of the internet that we use, with a single click of a button, we can know the answer to what we are trying to find out in a few seconds. This is a huge difference from back then when the internet wasn't as easily accessible. As time goes on, I think that society will become less and less intelligent since everyone will be dependent on technology. It might even be true that one day we would become so dependent on technology that we won't even know when we've stopped thinking.
I agree that individuals will become less intelligent as we become more dependent on technology. In fact, we are so dependent on technology doing everything for us instead of trying to solve things ourselves. For example, we turn to Google or other search engines when we can’t figure out the answer to a question. This definitely proves the fact that we don’t even try to fully understand the problem before searching the internet for answers. It’s possible that individuals will stop thinking when we fully rely on technology and its advancements in the future. People may not use their brain’s capacity to solve problems, which could possibly deplete our society of some of its finest intellects. As time passes by, our world may not even notice how we are slowly being absorbed into the vortex of technology.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying about us becoming a society that is so reliant on technology. Just looking around you when you go outside it's hard to find someone not looking at or holding a phone. People are becoming too reliant to the point nobody talks to anyone when out on social events, and students who have to be absorbing material, are just finding the easy way out with technology. Unfortunately, the world may come to the point where there will be no thinking done on the part of the human, and our daily lives will be commanded by technology.
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