261–270 of 352 posts
Doing things merely to stimulate pleasurable brain chemistry is fine unless all you do is play games or watch formulaic media that have no lasting effect or achievement.
For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…
This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot of commentators had written off television as useless garbage -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates that by pointing out that television is great for emotional storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows that model social values for people. Television turns everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evo…
Little bits of entertainment — music, poetry, jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics, musings about life and interpersonal relationships, practitioners demonstrating their craft.
It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard to get anywhere else. It's not great or even good at the normal news format but you can read about a riot and that the mayor called in the national guard in the paper, but the video of someone on their porch getting screamed at and having warning shots fired at them for not going indoors has an impact.
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Another, non-fictional, example of a corporation run wild is the British East India company. At one point they had a larger army than Britain. Because many of the British establishment had investments in the company and because the awful things it did were 'out of sight' it seems they were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted. As long as they kept turning a profit.
Both the EIC and its Dutch equivalent VOC were eventually dissolved by their respective governments. This disarms people from viewing even rampant corporations as truly dangerous; even corporations that fielded armies and waged wars ultimately weren't beyond the reach of the law.
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This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot of commentators had written off television as useless garbage -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates that by pointing out that television is great for emotional storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows that model social values for people. Television turns everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evo…
TikTok is good at personal content— short form videos that capture a slice of life for other real people. TikTok is a salon . Little bits of entertainment — music, poetry, jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics, musings about life and interpersonal relationships, practitioners demonstrating their craft. It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard to get anywhere else. It's not g…
For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…
This is not exactly correct. When the book was written, a lot of commentators had written off television as useless garbage -- totally bad for society. Postman (correctly) complicates that by pointing out that television is great for emotional storytelling, and he is in favor of fictional television shows that model social values for people. Television turns everything into emotional content, which is why TV news evo…
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Precisely - the medium is the message. Books are slow, deliberate, require imagination and attention. Seven second tiktok videos are the opposite. The method by which we consume the information impacts us just as much if not more than its content.
I've started reading more books (again) lately and the depth of character development and ideas in long form fiction is striking compared to even most long-form TV and films, let alone short attention span social media slop. (... and the best long-form TV and films are often based on books ...) You can really get deep into characters' heads, their motivations, etc. The more I read the more I feel like it makes me a b…
The things people read when they read a lot were not deep masterpieces. They were, basically, shovelware in book form.
For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads. In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the…
> I think that the discussion could use some Postman - not all media affects us in the same way - some media encourages behaviors that are good for society, and some media encourages behaviors that are bad for society. I think media simply mostly brings out the behaviors already inherent to people. If a shitty person sees their behavior validated in media, they are now more likely to act it out in real life. Likewise…
So if some behaviors are amplified more than other, isn't that equivalent to considering that a medium induces more frequently a certain behavior?
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Precisely - the medium is the message. Books are slow, deliberate, require imagination and attention. Seven second tiktok videos are the opposite. The method by which we consume the information impacts us just as much if not more than its content.
I've started reading more books (again) lately and the depth of character development and ideas in long form fiction is striking compared to even most long-form TV and films, let alone short attention span social media slop. (... and the best long-form TV and films are often based on books ...) You can really get deep into characters' heads, their motivations, etc. The more I read the more I feel like it makes me a b…
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There is a middle ground between woodworking and TikTok, no? People enjoyed talking to each other and had fun before we had technology. It’s easy to see social media as harmless, and maybe it is, but it also has the potential to act as a powerful tool for serving propaganda and brainwashing. I’m not suggesting an actual conspiracy theory here but it’s concerning that a few huge companies have the power to broadcast (…
> before we had technology There wasn't a time "before we had technology". Best to avoid that line of thinking if you want to escape the determinist (Veblem) trap and end up like Kaczynski. Postman is an author we enjoy but seldom acknowledge the wider genre into which he fits. It's called "tech critique". You can study it through the ages, comparing the outlooks and influences of Einstein, Ellul, Freud, Fromm, Heide…
Well, this was nothing if not besides the point. Anyone on this site should recognize that when people like the person you responded to use the word "technology", especially in this context, it is typically a colloquialism for information technology, as in television, computers, phones and the like.
Even in colloquial English amongst the public, "technology" hasn't referred to technology in general for several decades, but simply to "information technology". It has become so common that the general public refers to the entire information technology industry simply as "tech" or the "tech industry", which excludes all traditional engineering disciplines outside of electrical, despite all those disciplines working with technology.