Are We Really Thinking?

In Postman's last line he talks about how people today have stopped thinking. He said that because people are laughing and not thinking they don’t know why they are actually laughing. Postman says that the problem is not that people are laughing and not thinking about it, but that people do not know why they stopped thinking and knowing what they are laughing at. This shows that our society has focused more on entertainment and less on actually thinking about what is entertaining them. As long as a show is captivating the attention of people they do not care that they have stopped thinking and mindlessly watch something and not know why they have stopped thinking.

Interesting Communication

Not being able to talk and instead having to draw was annoying. “Conversations” took a lot longer to draw out what I wanted to say than just being able to say what I was thinking.  Also not being able to talk made some things confusing when trying to figure what the other people’s drawings meant, so it affected the points that myself and others were trying to get across.

Technology Trouble

In both the video and the book Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman talks about how people are changing in society. For instance it is becoming normal to talk to inanimate objects, such as an answering machine. He said in the future we would be talking to doorknobs and toasters, and that would be considered totally normal. In Postman’s book he says “moment to moment, it turns out, is not God’s conception, or nature’s. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created.” He is talking about how society is focused on technology and is talking to it and it has become natural and a part of our daily lives.

Postman also talks about how people are “shifting from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics” (page 13). People these days are changing from the enjoyment of reading to just watching television. Even though people relied on readings in the past people today want more technology to do things for themselves, making us lazy. This is because people are used to the technology and are always ready for the newest thing on the market.