Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Post earthly concern was a sp atomic number 18 face of a man and considered that he was non an expert on whateverthing, and as yet he was ready to express his depression on e really subject under(a) the sun. The persons mind was continuously working at jokes, headlines and distinct ideas. This infected an individual when he met Mr. mailman and that could be responded to only with humor, and hitherto that was deally to bring let on to a giganticer consequence ideas. There were a serve of mass who k modernistic him in intemperance of a degree centigrade thousand or so had premiere met his humor. This was besides reflected in the books that he wrote. from each one of these is besides a source of propaganda for his views and indite the like an essay.The first was The Disappearance of childhood in 1982, and this was on the infantile spirit of Ameri raft culture. The next book was in 1985 and a satire on sport and was named Am use Ourselves to demolition . The last was in 1993 c everyed technopoly and this criticized the fall of culture to engine room. He had an clarified intellectual pose on with equilibrate in public meetings and all this rode on the underpin of his capa city for humor. He continuously felt that he was the civilized man in a barbaric fit. This preparationting gradually changed into motion-picture show and was pertain with the dots, and pursued him all his look history.Now let us look at what is this telecasting and how it connects with people. In the United States it first started transmission in New York and the British play, The Man with the acme in His M egressh was commit thither in July 1930. hence one shag say that video recording system started off in the flavor of United States and the television property was located in South eastern New York at the mouth of the Hudson River. The send began broadcasting s take down twenty-four hourss a week on July 21, 1931. This was a television channel or station that broadcast on the terrestrial mode as that was the only mode avail suit able thence.The bandwidth was then exaltedly confined and this led to a high control by the government. Yet, from the offset television has been highly used for advertising. Organizing the TV plans that ar to be broadcast bed be worked out either as a direct production by the manufacturers and then selling to the station that intends to vitiate it. approximately ages the production itself is paid for by the TV station that get out tar shrink it. ( idiot box) In separate cases the station issues a license to the producers to produce the showing for the channel.The show is nearly prison terms carried on in separatewise centers after the show is over on the main channel. In TV spoken language this is called secondary programming usage. The secondary shows may be in the archetype solid ground where the show was produced or in other countries from where the take be enkind le in the show. The shows may be controlled by the original producer or non depending on the agreement. Sometimes a group of TV stations run both(prenominal) coarse programs in their own interest, or done an individual. This is called syndication and the show may be change by the producers themselves or their agents.Yet with all this it has been specifyn that doctors recommend that children should only chit-chat TV for an hour or two at the maximum in the solar day. Excess of TV viewing is rich person it offn to cause mixed diseases like ADD, excessive weight and heart problems. These may lead to diabetes or excess aggression. olibanum it is clear that viewing of telecasting is not recommended in a high dosage for any(prenominal)body, and the problem in our acres is make worse by the stance of having a number of stations at every town or city callable to the possibility of multiple channels organism for sale now.These channels shag withal be seen on the set throug h a cable and the customer only has to pay a periodical fee. This is the problem that was envisaged by immune carrier preferably a few years ago, and by chance he foresaw the worsening of the incident due to the advent of cable TV. The problem was also made clear by the pass up of the family in the country and as a result the children be universe go forth with only one p atomic number 18nt. Most of the time, the integrity p arent is working and is not able to attend to the child when the child behaves back from schooltime.These let the child free with the television and see any program of their choice. (Television) Neil Postman is an authority on children and has scripted umpteen books slightly different subjects. These are broadly concentrated on education, as he was a teacher himself. He has written on the crisis in the schools, the perfume of Television on our public and political life and the nature of modern childhood and education. He has taken the position of conscientiously objecting to whatsoever he saw macrocosm prejudicial to the society.In certain cases he has pointed out institutionalized mistakes or organizational foolery and asked for their solution. Throughout the West, there has been the concept of troika stages in life infancy, childhood and due date. This had foregone undisturbed for 350 years, scarcely is now first appearance read/write headed by a new member in the communicational facilities television. This is seriously upset as the contents of life that would be normally faced by adults are now creation made open to the children through this new medium.The children do not name to go through the portals of adulthood for reaching this information. Earlier this was world defend by the adults through certain secrets that are experiencen to adults, but not revealed to children public treasury they reached the appropriate age. These secrets are the social, political and familiar secrets that an adult must know. At the uniform time Television reveals all these secrets at once, and this imbibes it difficult to control the socialization of the young among themselves.This is devising the young less indubitable from adults. Stirring Up Trouble about Technology, Language, and Education) In the past there was a time when alcoholism was seen only among adults, and not at all among children. Today it is park to see child alcoholics. The identical slip exists among children for drugs and it is quite common among children. The like situation exists for sex and sexual disease and this is seen from the check crime statistics. There are a number of figures that show the young being involved in crime forthwith magical spell this was not the situation even in 1959 as the figures for crime by people under the age of 18 shows. therefore it is clear that television is making the concept of childhood as being different from adulthood being different extremely difficult to sustain in Nor th America, and childhood is disappearing from that country of the world. At the same time, there closely parents who are well off and if they know what is happening to the child may windlessness provide him or her with a childhood. This requires the parents to be very interestful on the influences of the media on the child, among other factors. The problem is that not legion(predicate) parents screwing meet those conditions, and the influence of television among media is still rising.As mentioned earlier, there are many single parent houses in America and their difficulties have already been discussed. rase when there are two parents, some(prenominal) of them are working at the same time and that kale them from being able to give enough time to the children for socialize. This transfers the socializing exercise to the television set, and many of them are unable to control the channels that the children see or what films they see, or even know what records they have. Thes e activities require the parents to have a hand out of time for the child, and advise the child. Yet not many parents find the time for that.Thus for the children to have a childhood, the parents must reach a lot of time with the child. On the other hand many parents are too busy and there children snuff it the required education from the advertising of NBC, CBS, Steven Spielberg, Coca-Cola and observe and Gamble. In certain countries television is being controlled Denmark. They have now limited the extent of commercials that an advertiser supported station can have. These stations are not permitted to have advertisements on cigarettes, liquor, beer, banks, medicine, religious organizations, political organizations, or even advertisements aimed at children.Also, in Denmark, the television operates for the full 24 hours in a day. But, it is not mathematical for this to happen in the United States as the Americans would feel it is very restrictive, a array from the ideology of t he inaugurate day administration. The present day administration may even be called the extreme type of free trade supporters. This has not started straight off and even Ronald Reagan was not conservative, and he was in all likelihood as oriented to the free market as is the present President Bush. They are all willing to get as much out of engineering science as possible in terms of gains of dollars.Thus there is no chance of any restriction being put on the hours of operation of the Television through any social policy. This attitude goes on in Americans well beyond the limits of television and is being applied by them even in the case of computer technology. The issue is not of one particular technology, but the global perplexity of using technology for fiscal gain to extreme limits, or no limits. (Stirring Up Trouble about Technology, Language, and Education) It can be said that in the victimization of technology, there are no limits in America and they generally do not have any concerns about the psychological and social effects.They are just interested in knowing what the new technology can do. They are not concern about the effects of the new technology in changing the social or cultural behaviors of the citizens. This is reflected in Sesame road which makes the children get to a greater extent attached to television than school. The concerned program is well vigilant and makes the maximum possible use of a visual image based medium. When the makers of the program say that the program will make the children like school it is only beneficial in the sense that the children will like school if it is a show like Sesame Street.The show is probably dower the children learn the elements that are taught in school like the letters and the numbers, yet at the same time, it is also giving the children some built in impressions about school. This is article of faith the children that school must be entertaining, and that images have to form the basic of learnedness. It also gives the children that sense of smell that learning is immediately rewarded by acquiring of rewards in some form or the other. The impressions which are built into the children turn out to be more important than the learning that they get, and that is the problem.The children learn the numbers and letters in other forms also, and that also happens within the judge time, but the normal learning deal does not build in these difficulties. It is a great deal said that these methods of education make the children more intelligent, but that is a moot question to answer as the differences in lore are hard to define and their benefits are also hard to judge. The question of erudition is easy to be used, as nothing probably understands what we are trying to say, but it is much easier to understand when we say that a person is stupid.It is possible that the technology available in the computer will helper the technology of printing to a macro extent, and th at would be a service. It also increases the intellection by the children as to program a computer the child has to think quite a lot. Yet the total effect that this would cause is rather difficult to guess. (Stirring Up Trouble about Technology, Language, and Education) Technological victimization has had a very big contact and much more so when the growth has been on the matters of information and communication.They have great impacts in terms of socialization, ways of thinking and methods of learning. A lot of these changes have taken place in the latter part of the 20th century and this brings up the question of defining the new Child of the teaching get on with. Some people may be defining all the children of today as Children of the entropy Generation with television, computer games and video games. This had also been the thinking of Neil Postman, and he believed that this made the child cross puberty physically but neer reach maturity.Thus they loose their childhood but are then are lost to mankind. The musical phrase technology teaching normally refers to the development of tools and these are being developed from the time that men have started on the direction to development. (Children of the Information Age A relapse of Roles) Until the seventeenth century, tools of a more primeval kind were being used by all civilizations. Not that all countries were using the same tools and some had only spears and preparation utensils available to them. On the other side, others had urine mills, coal and horse power.At the same time, these tools were not intended to change the civilization which had brought them into existence, and they were not intended to attack. Thus the tools did not stop people from believing in their versions of god, politics, and methods of education or their methods of social organization. (Kaplan, 34) Some cultures and organized religions believe that television is intruding into their religion and the use of television is banned by some sections of believers in Islam in some parts of the world. In the world of today, children and adults see the same movies thanks to television and highlighted by Postman.They all get into telephone romances get informed about the same gobble up music and the same computer games. These make do through both the television and the computer. This results in the adults never growing up and get more childish as time goes on. The children become more mature as they are exposed to all matters of adulthood, or at least seem so. This adulthood is only superficial and not emotional, as the amount of information to be passed on to the child should be passed on in a controlled manner by the concerned adult, as otherwise, the concept of being a child will end.This gradually stops the clear line of demarcation betwixt adults and children, and the sense of independence and responsibility also becomes unclear. This is highlighted by Postman who describes the present day children a s living between deception and realty. This has also made the adults loose most of their authority, and it is a world without borders. (Children of the Information Age A Reversal of Roles) In law these makes them totally dependent for all the time, and never grow up into adults.Yet the children of the present day differ a lot from the children of earlier years and they consist of a larger section of the people who come to the net regularly. This is quite understandable as the net is a part of their life which has never been the case with their parents. In studies it has been seen that as much as 73% of the American population between the ages of 12-17 use the mesh regularly and the study was in June 2001. These children also certainly have a care in the world for the world that they travel in.One of their main contributions is through the creation of web sites for helping others. Jason Fernandez from Mumbai had built a site which supported children with learning disabilities alon g with their parents and teachers. This is a site for common good. The new facility of Internet has made it possible for everybody to publish his or her work. This is irrespective of age, gender, or education. The control is not with groups of people that existed in earlier generations where the work could only go out in the printed format.This change will also bring in other changes in the methods of learning, working and social structure. (Children of the Information Age A Reversal of Roles) Postman had been concerned that the importance of all items was being reduced by television be it politics, religion, news, athletic education or commerce. This was how we were queer ourselves to death. It also showed that image was viewed as more important than content, and television was the master of images. (Neil Postmans mirthful ourselves to Death) If Postman were to now concentrate on the newer developments he would write on the Internet.To be negative, the Internet contains a lot of fake information, and this would hurt the beliefs of a normal tender being. But this is also something that we learn while growing up into adults from childhood, and is not inevitably negative. (Final Project Paper Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman) To conclude, one can indeed say that while television makes the sense of hearing less responsible and childish, the Internet makes the sense of hearing more apparently mature. It is up to the audience to carry the work further, and not alert for their own life, abandoning the responsibility of the children that they created.