In between learning Chinese and building websites for everyone and their brother, I like to try to sneak a book in. Right now I’m working my way through Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. I’m only about half way through, but I must say, this is a really, really good book.
The basic premise of the book is that television culture has destroyed the way that we hold and think about public discourse. In the 1800s, text was our only medium. Before the advent of photography, it was very rare to know what public figures looked like. Thus, the way that we knew about famous individuals was via the things they wrote, and the things written about them. Because of this, a premium was placed on the ability to express oneself eloquently and intelligently.
With television, image became the most important element. TV moved discourse and debate away from thoughtful conversation and into the realm of showmanship. It became about telling a story, or rather showing a story. It’s hard to have discussions on TV, since people tend to do a lot of thinking while in discussion, and pointing a camera towards someone in the act of thinking doesn’t make for an exciting visual.
The most interesting thing for me about this book is that, since it was written in the early 80s, I’m constantly re-examining the author’s arguments in the context of the Internet Age. The Internet is a strange medium, since it’s still predominantly textual. It’s a strange kind of text, though, in that it, like television, is mostly throw-away. In the 19th century, text was expensive. It was printed, and distributed, and required special equipment. Now, most of the email traffic on the internet is spam — worthless information. It’s temporary and throw-away. Instant messaging more so. So, while the internet is mostly text, we’ve definitely not returned to the “golden age” of the printing press. We have a text world, but with the bias of a television generation.
More and more we’re running away from text on the Internet, too. As someone who works in advertising, you don’t know how many times I hear (and say), “we need less text”, “no one reads on the Internet”, “we need to show it, not tell it.” The quick cuts of TV and the desire for instant gratification have effectively killed our attention spans. People wait less than 4 seconds for a page to load. “Movies” on the Internet rarely exceed 5 minutes. Some commercial spots are down to 5 seconds. AJAX is huge right now because we can refresh part of the page, rather than the whole thing, thus cutting down reload time.
The evidence is everywhere. The Internet isn’t making is more intelligent — it’s making us less patient.
We are addicted to instant information. More so, we are addicted to instant entertainment. Whether you get off on sports scores, new gadgets, Hollywood gossip, Wikipedia entries, song lyrics, or videos of kids playing with light sabers, it’s all just entertainment. Welcome to our Brave New World.
