Neil Postman Opportunity #1

            In chapter one, Neil Postman says, “Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence” (Postman 7). I agree with this idea because it is hard to express one self if the medium is not very complex. I found this out when Mr. Brandt had his AP Language class not talk for an entire day, but if we wanted to communicate we had to use white boards and draw pictures not words. Throughout the day many people tried to ask me questions and I did my best to answer, but my pictures were always being misunderstood and eventually I gave up and I tried to tell them that I would have to talk to them later.

            In chapter two, Postman claims, “In a print culture, the memorization of a poem, a menu, a law or most anything else is merely charming” (Postman 25). The objection I have to this statement is that some people, like waiters and lawyers, do need to memorize things like menus and laws in order to do their jobs better. If these people did not memorize these things they would not be able to tell you what is on their signature burger or state which laws you may or may not have broken, and these people would not be doing their jobs to the best of their abilities.

In chapter three, Postman states, “The influence of the printed word in every arena of public discourse was insistent and powerful not merely because of the quantity of printed matter but because the monopoly” (Postman 41). I agree with this because back in the 1800’s, which is the time period that he is referring to, there was nothing to do for entertainment then read books or check out the newspaper, there was no movie theatre or no NCIS marathon on USA to watch.

            In chapter four, Neil Postman asks, “Is there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of talk? Or five? Or three? Especially without pictures of any kind?”(Postman 45). Postman was talking about today’s Americans not having the same attention span as those in the 1850’s. I agree to this because today Mr. Brandt was giving a speech for the NHS ceremony and unfortunately as I was listening, maybe due to Mr. Brandt’s soothing voice or just my lack of an attention span, I began to doze off. I bet if the people listening to Lincoln and Douglas’ debates had listened to Mr. Brandt they would have been relieved that his speech was over after twenty minutes or so.

            In chapter five, Postman uses Coleridge’s famous line of “water everywhere without a drop to drink” (Postman 67). Postman uses this to discuss how information today is not used often in conversation, or at least not used for a non-trivial reasons. I agree to this statement because in Pre-Calculus I am learning about how to change polar coordinates into rectangular coordinates. I know that I will use this information on a test that will be coming up soon, but after that this information will be stored as “When the time is right folder” in my brain, and this “folder” is becoming larger and large everyday, but my opportunity to use anything in this “folder” is becoming slimmer and slimmer.

            In chapter six, Neil Postman says, “Not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience” (Postman 87). I agree to this because if I were to flip on the weather channel I would find one of two things: either a weatherman giving the weather, or possibly a program about a type of natural weather occurrences, like hurricanes or tornados. Both examples are going to be entertaining to watch, so be it that the weatherman tells jokes about the weather, or the program will show footage of a house being blown away by the storm.

            In chapter seven, Postman states, “we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context” (Postman 100). That is to say that every kind of news is given to us to know of the topic, but to not know much about it. I agree to this because when I was watching the news about the Egypt riots I was very interested, but after about a minute on that subject the anchor changed the topic to a local cat show and who won it. I was sitting there trying to think of what they had just said about Egypt, but I could not remember because I was disoriented by the sudden change of topic and the how the anchor was able to report both in the same tone of voice.

            In chapter eight, Neil Postman refers to religion on television as losing “everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity” (Postman 117). One example I can think of and how he has taken down the idea of a historic religion, like Christianity, and turn it into his own kind of worship, is the “preaching’s” of Joel Osteen. Joel has no denomination behind his teaching, and what he claims to be Christianity is similar to what we believe, but there are many things we do not agree with, like that if we think positively God will give us what we hope for.           

In chapter nine, Postman talks about how a person who has seen a million commercials could “believe that all political problems have fast solutions through simple measures–or ought to” (Postman 131). I disagree with the hope that most people, who have seen all these commercials would know that issues in society cannot change over night, like the ban on smoking in public places. This ban went into effect last year, but even though the ban came into effect overnight it has taken a couple months to actually been seen as a positive thing, because in the beginning I do not believe many places actually enforced the law as they do now.

            In chapter ten, Neil Postman discusses how “Sesame Street” relieved parents of the responsibility of teaching their children how to read and how this is mainly because it has happened in a culture “where children are apt to be considered a nuisance” (Postman 142). I have seen this idea of parents seeing their children as nuisance at my work place. I have seen parents just drop their children off at the movies and not actually go into the movie with them, the claim that they need a small break from the child and that they will go shopping and be back when the movie is over. I stand there dumb struck by the fact that they find their child so bad to be around that they would not take him/her shopping with them.

     In Huxley's version of the world, people wouldn't choose to laugh instead of think, but rather not know anything about what they are laughing at, and not knowing why they aren't thinking about things either.  The distinction is that television has caused us to just go with the flow and laugh along with the "laughing" of the audience on the show, and it has caused us to not think about things we see on television. This is bad because if we are just laughing at what other people laugh at, we are not laughing at what we think is funny and we are just accepting what other people laugh at as comedy, which is some cases it isn't comedy but could be just plain harsh. One example of this idea is when Ricky Gervais hosted the golden globes and just ripped on all the nominees, people laughed even thought most of what he said was harsh. The fact that we don't think about things as much as people used to when newspapers were the source of news is a bad thing for us as well, because this shows just how desensitized we are to real news. One major contributor to our lack of thought is when real news is mixed in with celebrity "news," like someone having a baby or what Snooki did the other day.

Talking2Machines

    In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman says that with the invention of eyeglasses we have discovered that we do not need to accept what nature has given us. In his speech at Calvin College, he talks about cloning and how they will be used as “spare parts” just in case someone will need a new kidney or a new lung later on in life. Both of these inventions are great for society, but they both bring up idea that we can improve our lives through these means. With glasses we no longer need to deal with the destiny of anatomy, the destiny of not being able to see clearly, and with cloning the destiny of anatomy of not having extra organs to use when the original fails.
    Postman quotes the author of Being Digit in saying that we will one day become used to talking to machines, which are inanimate objects. In his book, Postman talks about how a person who is strictly oral isn’t used to reading a book and asking question to a text who will not answer in a vocal way. Just like one must adapt to using and speaking to machines, a strictly oral person will have to adapt to reading written words.

*Title Removed for Not Being PC*

“Civility in public discourse is important,” Chavez uses these words as to state what her article is going to be about and in these words she is saying that being polite is important when speaking in public.

Chavez used bellicose in her article to introduce the paragraph about phrases that many people use. She uses bellicose to describe these because it means eager to fight, and that is important because most of these phrases are linked to “war” talk, like being “in the cross-hairs” or even “campaign,” which means a series of military battles.

Chavez is trying to convince people that people shouldn’t be upset over the words that are used, but rather they should be upset if someone uses theses words to be rude or harmful. I think the best example she uses is the words “gay” and “queer” being used, people normally only use queer to speak down to a homosexual, when in the dictionary it actually means “strange” or “odd.”

I agree with Chavez, instead of being upset over the words that are used, we should be upset over what the people using those words actually mean.