Analysis of Postman's Overidealistic View of Typographic Media and Cynical Views on Television

     Reading Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death mainly in the third chapter titled the Typographic Mind I find that he takes a very idealized version of the benefits of the introduction of print media technologically in order to argue his point about the negatives of our television-based culture. In the chapter, one of his main ideas is that print media with its inception brought about," a definition of intelligence that gave priority to the objective,"( Postman 55.) and he supports this claim by saying that it created the downfall of religious superstition and allowed for continual progress throughout the world. Postman, however, doesn't recognize that at the beginning of its inception and continuing through the 18th to 19th centuries the print culture created in the Age of Reason that Postman credits with continuing progress within society only reinforced societal barriers between the classes as many works such as Newton's Principia and Galileo's Sideris Nuncius were written in Latin a language only known to the upper class and well educated. I also take issue with his belief that a lawyer must be proficient in their understanding of philosophers such as Seneca, Cicero, and Plato. He then says that the state of legal education by the 20th century had degraded because we have shackled the law with technicalities. In my opinion understanding philosophers such as Plato and Cicero are unnecessary to any lawyer's work which is why often before becoming lawyers, people study political science which focuses on rational thought and not abstract ideas such as that of Plato and Cicero. Plato's and Cicero's ideas are also dangerously antiquated and not at all suited for application in today's society. For example within Plato's the Republic he argues for a society ruled by philosopher-kings which would inevitably create a socially stratified society similar to the caste system of Ancient India. Ideas like these are completely unnecessary for a modern lawyer to understand and when Postman argues about the understanding of the technicalities of the law he does not seem to understand that any legal incident is not simply cut and dry which is why technicalities exist in order to maintain the fairness within our justice system. Postman also fails to recognize when print media has caused chaos in our world or mass hysteria. A prominent example of this was the writings of Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution mainly in the newspaper L'Ami du peuple where he advocated for violence against individuals who opposed the radical Jacobin movement that took control after the execution of King Louis the XVI. Eventually, Marat's writings become a precursor and one of the causes of the Radical Stage of the French Revolution where more than 17,000 people were executed. Postman never mentions instances like this within history because in his idealistic view of print media atrocities like this in his mind should never be brought to light.
      Postman also shares an unnaturally negative view of Television Media. Postman believes that our televisions have created a world that is entirely self-contained and endlessly entertaining as he believes televisions and now by extension our devices influence our choices on a day to day basis. The first thing I disagree with is that our televisions and I'll include our devices now too have made a self-contained world. The world today with our television matches is now more interconnected than ever because now we can listen to any form of media from any part of the world whether it be Bollywood movies or Soccer Matches in England. We are able now to instantaneously speak to others anywhere in the world with an internet signal and we learn and understand more about different cultures more than ever. Another benefit of television media is increased awareness about issues of the world such as poverty, corruption, and eventually warfare during the war in Vietnam. Television coverage of the War in Vietnam is what brought the horrors and atrocities of the war to the American public and swayed public opinion against the war as compared to before with simple print media coverage of events during wartime was heavily censored. I don't agree with Postman's idea that our technology influences the choices we make especially in the modern world because in modern-day technology actually conforms to our biases in order to advertise their products which isn't necessarily a positive thing because it creates a polarized atmosphere especially in politics where different people are fed different content but it never influences our choices directly like he states.

-Thomas Luong