A Brave New World

"For in the end, he 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." The distinction is that laughter was not the cause of the end of thinking, but that the laughter continued even if understanding of any kind, even of the joke itself, did not. They did not even realize why they had stopped thinking. This matters because entertainment in itself does not end thinking, but when one is ignorant of the effects of calling everything entertainment, one slowly loses the ability to think or understand. If one never questions how technology is shaping one's thinking or culture, then one will never become aware that there are dangers in using technology in regards to intellect. However, if one is aware of this, then one can avoid the dangers and treat television and most technology like it should be treated: like entertainment, not serious topics (for the most part.)

Dr. Postman

In his speech, Dr. Postman paralleled several ideas from his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. One is how technology changes how we act. One of Postman's points in his book was, "For although culture is a creation of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication-from painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television." Postman talked about how eventually, because we are becoming used to talking through machines, we might become more comfortable talking into them than not, an example of our culture changing because of the "medium of communication." Also, because we are so used to talking to machines, Postman used an example from Negropante in his speech, who suggested we might begin to talk to inanimate objects without any reservation at all. This is similar to a quote Postman used in his book by Ernst Cassirer: "Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself."  Negropante suggested that we might begin to talk to doorknobs and toasters quite comfortably because of our constant use of technology to speak. If one is talking to an inanimate object, then one is essentially "constantly conversing with himself." Postman's point in all of this was to say the symbolism of technology might cause someone to associate objects with conversation because of the medium of communication, even if this is an unlikely extreme.

Dr. Postman's speech