ABSTRACT
Some form of media – some technology of representation – is necessary in any form of communication. As Neil Postman argues, we couldn’t know anything in the world without different forms of media to convey information:
The information, the content, or, if you will, the ‘stuff ’ that makes up ‘the news of the day’ did not exist – could not exist – in a world that lacked the media to give it expression. I do not mean things like fires, wars, murders and love affairs
Postman was one of the pioneers of media and communication studies, and wrote a very important book entitled Amusing Ourselves To Death (1987). He was interested in how television, as a specific technology of communication, shapes the information we receive. Postman argues that American television privileges image over content, and therefore feeds the audience ‘dumbed-down’ entertainment rather than rational political argument. As an example, Postman offers the following:
it is implausible to imagine that anyone like our twenty-seventh President, the multi-chinned, threehundred pound William Howard Taft, could be put forward as a presidential candidate in today’s world. The shape of a man’s body is largely irrelevant to the shape of his ideas when he is addressing a public in writing or on the radio, or, for that matter, in smoke signals. But it is quite relevant on television. The grossness of a three-hundred-pound image, even a talking one, would overwhelm any logical or spiritual subtleties conveyed by speech . . . You cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the content.
