Ted Koppel agrees!

I recently came across the following, a commencement address that Ted Koppel gave at Duke University in 1987. This is a good summary of Postman's book!

Look at MTV or Good Morning America and watch the images and ideas flash past in a blur of impressionistic appetizers. No, there is not much room on TV for complexity. You can partake of our daily banquet without drawing on any intellectual resources; without either physical or moral discipline. We require nothing of you; only that you watch; or say that you were watching if Mr. Nielsen's representative should call. And gradually, it must be said, we are beginning to make our mark on the American psyche. We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. "Shoot up if you must; but use a clean needle." "Enjoy sex whenever with whomever you wish; but wear a condom."

No. The answer is no. Not no because it isn't cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward — but no, because it's wrong. Because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human beings trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In the place of Truth we have discovered facts; for moral absolutes we have substituted moral ambiguity. We now communicate with everyone and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel and it is a television antenna. A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy; in which everyone's opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit. Indeed, it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace of television's ocean banalities.

Our society finds Truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form Truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a hallowing reproach.

What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions, they are Commandments. Are, not were.

The sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments is that they codify, in a handful of words, acceptable human behavior. Not just for then or now but for all time. Language evolves, power shifts from nation to nation, messages are transmitted with the speed of light, man erases one frontier after another; and yet we and our behavior, and the Commandments which govern that behavior, remain the same. The tension between those Commandments and our baser instincts provide the grist for journalism's daily mill. What a huge, gaping void there would be in our informational flow and in our entertainment without routine violation of the Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt not murder.

and while I'm at it...

will you two be the best men for my wedding? (just checking to see if anyone actually reads this blog...)

The Medium is the Message

Guys

I tried to find a more creative title for my blog posting, and I just came to realize that Marshall McLuhan's is so catchy and so darn insightful that there's no need to bother.

This is my posting concerning the first two chapters, and Postman makes it quite clear what he's trying to say (don't you just love it when authors are as clear as saying "this book is about..."? it makes the reader's job so much more straightforward!). Two quotations, and then some thoughts:


...
"To say it, then, as plainly as I can, this book is an inquiry into and a lamentation about the most significant American cultural fact of the second half of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television. This change-over has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate the same ideas." --page 8

"I raise no objection to television’s junk. The best things o television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened by it… therein is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, as when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations… television is nothing less than a philosophy of rhetoric." -page 17
...


Here is the gist of the first two chapters and, really, the whole of Postman's book. I reckon we could spend our entire discussion on these two ideas:
1) television has altered public discourse
2) television in itself shapes the discourse, no matter what that discourse is.

Idea #1: How bad is it? I felt shivers when I read this book for the first time because it resonated deeply w/ the feelings I was trying to piece together about the USA, especially since returning from Lima. In short, the things that were considered important by the two cultures seemed to be different. When trying to compare the interests/personalities of the average people I met from outside the US, I found that people cared a lot more about 'real' things, whereas the culture in America had to do more with image and hype.

Brittany Spears' life now makes CNN- that happened while we were at Whistler. What else would I need to say to convince either of you of where we're at? Any culture in which something like this becomes possible is already in deep trouble. Is there anyone who doubts the direction public discourse in America has taken?

Shall we say that we'll start with the Postman book?

Now that we've all said that we will start with the Postman book, let's figure out a reading plan. Since we'll see each other soon, shall we put off our first discussion until after the trip? Or, shall we try to discuss the first chunk of the book while we're up in Whistler?

another thought

is the book "Cash Values" that I gave you to read, Drew. I KNOW that's a subject (xty and capitalism) that we're all interested in, yet I would guess there would be a fair amount of disagreement about how the two are inter-related. plus the book is short (~90 pages)

that book would probably go to #2 on my list...

sounds good- let's wait for Eric's input before we move on...

Okay: Here are my FeeeeWings

Good points, Timbo!

Of course, I agree that we need to be invested in this and complete the book.

I'd suggest Postman. I have not read it, but am eager to do so. Also, it's my newest present!

As I mentioned, I'm not gonna be reading until the 23rd of Dec. After that, though, I think it would be quite manageable to divy the book into 8 sections. It does not appear to be an long, exhausting book.

Those are my short points. But in honor of Tim, I'll try to make a few more:

• Bullet points have many virtues
• They help organize your thoughts
• They break complex ideas into manageable sizes
• Bullets also look neat

Okay, adios!

DK