Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
According to Cicero the goal of education was to free the student from the “tyranny of the present,” give them a greater historical context. But television aims to accomodate us to the present.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
51% of viewers cannot recall a single item of news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television, and we can only retain 20% of the information in a fictional televised news story. 21% can’t remember any items within one hour of broadcast.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
the CBS Nightly News with the words, “And that’s the way it was.” Few of his viewers found it extraordinary that the clash and turmoil of billions of human
Martin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
It seems distant now, but once upon a time the Internet was going to save us from the menace of TV. Since the late fifties, TV has had a special role, both as the country’s dominant medium, in audience and influence, and as a bête noire for a certain strain of American intellectuals, who view it as the root of all evil. In “Amusing Ourselves to Dea... See more
Chris Hayes • On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.
Neil Postman • Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The average length of a news story is only 45 seconds, but it’s not possible to convey the whole depth of an important story in such short a time. It’s meant to entertain, to be trivial.