Anyone got any similar suggestions to compliment this book? I quite liked Neil Postman’s analysis
On Television (Pierre Bourdieu)
>>25555956>Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television -- Jerry Mander That's his real name, believe it or not. The latter 3 essays are hit-or-miss, sometimes he's hitting you with some #Truths, sometimes he's rambling and doing 1970s pseudoneuroscience along the lines of "if you sit too close to da screen then your brain is mush n sheit bro !!," but the first essay is the clearest, most lucid introduction to technoskepticism I've ever read>The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brainscan't remember the writer offhand, but it's Amusing Ourselves To Death for the internet generation. Pairs well.Eventually you should read the big boy>The Technological Society by Jacques Ellulbecause every other popular technoskeptic work is essentially a watered-down version of this + Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.
>>25555956Did this jewish author happen to mention jewish influence in show business, the subject of his serious and acclaimed sociological critique? Just curious.
>>25555956>compliment this book
>>25558206Read it and come up with an actual argument, you empty headed twat.
>doing anything except working for your boss Seth Goldbergstein is amusing yourself to deathOK Rabbi
>>25558404Not what is in there.
>>25558429Then please enlighten us, because every faggot that posts this book never elaborates on anything
>>25558463Are you one of those retards breezing in from /v/, is that why you're so butthurt about this?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcOj0NYXgXs
>ask directly for quotes and elaboration from the book>STILL nothing
>>25558478Oh geezus fuckwads. He doesn't know how youtube works?
>can't look up anything himself>couldn't even comprehend the tagline on the book cover>still expects to be spoonfed
Truly telling that the people that continually prop this book up can never actually discuss it.
>>25558497What's telling is that you have not read it. You just go to the CIA wiki and assume any and all Jews must be the same person.Watch the video and let the nice man read a passage so you can get the gist of what the book is about. I know you don't read books, so when you're done with the video, go the fuck back to /v/ or whatever.
>>25558504>Didn't read answer>Post another answer I won't readI said, YOU DON'T READ. GO AWAY.
As the first poster has said, the main stuff you should read is Ellul and Heidegger.Similar stuff would be:>The Society Of The Spectacle - Guy DebordI have only started reading this one and was filtered due to me not being versed in Marxism at all. From what I've read online it is about how society is now being led by representations of things rather what they actually are, these representations are products of advertisement.>Simulacra and Simulation - Jean BaudrillardVery relevant today when you look at internet culture. Close to Debord.>Industrial Society And Its Consequences - Theodore KaczynskiI know its a meme, but its a good anti-tech/technosceptic book. It was my personal jumping pad from which i started reading other books in this theme. His writing is very clear and precise (given the fact it was written to be published in newspapers for people of various education levels to read). I find his argument that you cannot truly chose if you wish to interact/use a technology to be convincing.
>>25559230>Guy DebordDon't forget Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (his follow-up published 20 years later)
>>25559230Debord killed himself so I shant be reading his work
Despite humanity telling each other stories and engaging in art since we first existed, this jew has come along and told us that actually that's le bad and we're le amusing ourselves to death. Truly fascinating.
Marshall McLuhan.
>>25558504I'm choosing to actually engage with you despite the fact that you're a moron who may or may not be ragebaiting.Postman's central thesis is an elaboration on a certain real world example of his mentor Marshall McLuhan's theory of "the medium is the message". The core of the idea being that television programs (more broadly, entertainment in general) have, in some ways, replaced more effective means of education, and that no one has bothered to consider the potential consequences. There are things that you simply cannot express through television as thoroughly or as rigorously as you can with, say, a book. News media becomes a slave to ratings and journalism suffers. Classrooms attempt to integrate new technologies without understanding them, their limitations or their negative effects on mental, social and emotional development. Religion through television sermons becomes desacralized and mundane, stripped of its spiritual significance. Entertainment becomes more important than real understanding. That is how I understood Postman's book and I welcome any additions or corrections my fellow /lit/fags can provide. I find some of it to be a bit dated, but I agree with the general idea. I find McLuhan's work to be more rigorous, but Postman's book is easily digestible and a bit more concerned with praxis and real world examples. The book is objectively NOT saying entertainment is a bad thing, and as I recall, he explicitly says this in the book more than once.
>>25559620Only thing I'd add is that Postman sees it as an inherent tendency of the medium itself. The things you list suffer because television, by its nature, lends itself to nonstop visual and auditory stimulation: jump cuts, short shot lengths, musical cues, flashy spectacle. You could make television that avoids all of these, but it wouldn't be good television, and good television ultimately wins out where television is the primary medium of public discourse.Serious long-form political debate becomes less about policy and more about appearance, charisma, one-liners, and audience reaction shots. Religious services, which should be serious, quiet, reverential, and contemplative, turn into flashing lights and rock concerts, chiefly because that is what makes for better television.Ironically Postman has little issue with 'trashy TV' that exists purely for entertainment purposes and does not pretend otherwise. His issue is mostly with television as the primary medium through which a society comes to understand politics, news, education, etc. We only amuse ourselves to death in the sense that we now look for amusement in things that should be taken seriously.
>>25555956Roger Waters of Pink Floyd had an album of the same name, I suppose you can always try that. Friend said it's good
>im a tard with a short attention span that thinks the only visual works are retarded blockbusters therefore everyone else is as dumb as me and is le amusing yourself to deathHere's your expert Jewish intelligentsia bro
>>25559839Missed again.Read the book or SHUT THE FUCK UP.
>>25559933>reported posts stating the author was JewishOy vey
>>25555956Normie suggestion:>PropagandaEdward BernaysSincere suggestion:>Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda vs. Freedom and LibertyAlex CareyMeme suggestion:>Infinite JestDavid Foster Wallace
>>25555956Infinite Jest, unironically
>>25555956>suggestions to compliment this bookyes here is what you are looking for
>>25559747Came here to post this.It is good. But I'm not your friend.
My free market economics professor dad didn't like this book. He kept saying that it was nonsense to say that television "makes" people do anything, because it's just people making choices. I think he was being overly literal to avoid considering social critiques of capitalism.
This is from chapter 3, is there a record of what kind of books would have been most read at the time, or if there are any records of these lectures? I'm a fan of these community education projects.
>>25559747The foreword I read by the guy's son mentioned this actually.> (We’ll also disregard Roger Waters, cofounder of the legendary band Pink Floyd, whose solo album, Amused to Death, was inspired by the book. Go, Dad.)
>>25555956I remember reading this book and thinking "Wow, if this guy thinks television is that bad, what does he think of the internet?" and then finding out he died, like, a year before YouTube came out.
>>25562555>because it's just people making choices.Sounds like standard boomer retardation. The understanding that what you consume, interact, and associate with affects the choices you are able to make is found everywhere from ancient Mesopotamia to modern day psychology, except among boomers circa 1950-1970 for some reasonTell him to read Plato
>>25563816All communications media exist for the purpose of programming the plebs. This only works if you're an actual pleb. Fuck plebs.
>>25558399Find a current book that applies to current tech boomertard
>>25563959https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcOj0NYXgXs
i don’t have any suggestions but i also read this recently so i’ll blogpost a little, i guess.i liked the way he presented and walked through his analysis but i don’t agree with all of it. some of his arguments, that the primary media a culture communicates through shapes how a culture thinks, and that the form of communication itself influences what and how something is communicated, feels simplistic after the fact but it wasn’t a thing i really considered before reading this and it unlocked how i look at things now.i think his arguments toward the latter half of the book became fairly hamfisted though. just like how he showed examples of how text and literary tradition influenced the oratory traditions of the early/mid 19th century, tv (and video) can also be influenced similarly. he would probably counter argue that “literary” tv isn’t making the most of the medium and that tv should only ever try to be entertaining, but i don’t really agree with that. i’m still sorting out my ideas on this, but im leaning towards tv/audio+visual occupies smth between text and oratory, and it does have its use. in any case, the technology already exists, and you can’t go back in time to when it doesn’t exist, so the best thing you can do is try to find strategies to use it in a way that benefits you. i do agree though that text lends itself better to things like learning and studying, and if you only try to learn through tv-like formats/entertainment focused formats then your brain will become slush. but his arguments against trying to insert entertainment into difficult tasks feel very “old man yelling at clouds” coded to me. mostly because i have found success in gamifying processes in my own life. but i digress.i’m interested in reading the shallows because it seems like the closest parallel we have for our generation.
Kind of crazy how this is the last outpost to actually get good reading tips often, thank you anons
>>25555956I like the two books by Nicholas Carr.His forst book, The Shallows, looks at the changes of how the brain function as we switch from an analog to digital method of information transmission. He is fairly neutral on everything, which makes it an interest book. Write in 2010.His second book, Superbloom, was wrote in 2025. He takes the slightly less neutral position that humanity will not survive how retarded everyone is becoming.
