Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Audiobook (Free)

Within this eloquent and persuasive publication, Neil Postman examines the deep and broad effects of television culture on the manner in which we conduct our public affairs and exactly how “entertainment values” have corrupted the very way we think. As politics, news, religion, education, and commerce are given much less and less expression in the form of the imprinted word, they may be rapidly becoming reshaped to match certain requirements of television. And because tv is a visible medium whose images are most pleasurably apprehended if they are fast-moving and powerful, discourse on tv has little tolerance for discussion, hypothesis, or description. Postman argues that open public discourse-the advancing of quarrels in logical order for the public good, once a hallmark of American culture-is becoming converted from exposition and description to entertainment.