Amusing Ourselves To Death Study Questions:
Chapter One:
What does Postman say about the transformation of public discourse?
Postman says his argument “fixes its attention on the forms of human conversation”; what is his argument?
How are our forms of media like metaphors?
Chapter Two:
What is epistemology?
What does Postman say about the concept of truth?
What is “the general character of print intelligence”?
What does Postman think of the epistemology created by television?
Chapter Three:
How widespread was reading in Typographic America? Were lecture halls prevalent?
Was the printed word abundant and did print enjoy a monopoly in terms of public discourse?
Chapter Four:
What do certain aspects of the Lincoln-Douglas debates tell us about the audiences who attended them?
What does Postman mean when he writes that “the resonance of typography was ever-present” during the debates?
How is reading an essentially rational activity?
What is nature of public discourse in a print based culture?
How was advertising “an essentially serious and rational enterprise” until the 1890’s? What changed in the 1890’s?
What was the Age of Exposition? How does Postman define “exposition”?
Chapter Five:
What does Postman mean by “context-free information”?
The telegraph turned information into what?
What does Postman mean by “telegraphy made relevance irrelevant”?
Is Postman’s view of “inert” news useful?
What are the characteristics of telegraphic discourse?
How does language depend on context? Does an image depend on context?
What and when was the “graphic revolution”?
What is “pseudo-context”?
How does television perfect “the epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph”?
How is television a “meta-medium”? How is it “myth”?
Television, according to Postman, has transformed our culture into what sort of an arena?
Chapter Six:
What is the nature of television in terms of entertainment?
What does Postman say about how television “stages the world”?
Chapter Seven:
What is the nature of the “Now…this” world view?
How does Postman define “credibility”?
What is Postman’s definition of “disinformation”?
What did Walter Lippmann write in 1920 about liberty, community and lies?
How did Huxley grasp the relationship between institutional control and mass indifference?
What is the “’ricochet’ effect” of “television-oriented print media”?
Chapter Eight:
What’s wrong with televised religion?
Chapter Nine:
Are television commercials about the character of products or the character of consumers of products?
What are the “lessons” of television commercials?
How is a book “all history”?
Why are epistemological “continuity and context” important in a healthy democracy?
Chapter Ten:
According to Postman, what does “Sesame Street” teach children to love?
What are the three commandments of educational television?
Chapter Eleven:
“Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?”
Is technology neutral?
Is the problem what we watch or that we watch?
“What the is the kind of information that best facilitates thinking?”
What does Postman say about computers?
How do we achieve “media consciousness”? Where is the best place to address the need for such awareness?
