Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
Neil Postman was a special type of a man and considered that he was not an expert on anything, and yet he was ready to express his opinion on every subject under the sun. The person's mind was continuously working at jokes, headlines and different ideas. This infected an individual when he met Mr. Postman and that could be responded to only with humor, and even that was likely to bring out more ideas. There were a lot of people who knew him -- in excess of a hundred thousand or so -- had first met his humor. This was also reflected in the books that he wrote. Each of these is also a source of propaganda for his views and written like an essay. The first was "The Disappearance of Childhood" in 1982, and this was on the infantile nature of American culture. The next book was in 1985 and a satire on entertainment and was named "Amusing Ourselves to Death." The last was in 1993 called "technopoly" and this criticized the fall of culture to technology. He had an excellent intellectual pose along with poise in public meetings and all this rode on the back of his capacity for humor. He always felt that he was the civilized man in a barbaric setting. This setting gradually changed into television and was concerned with the dots, and pursued him all his life. (Neil Postman (1931-2003): Some Recollections)
Now let us look at what is this television and how it connects with people. In the United States it first started transmission in New York and the British play, "The Man with the Flower in His Mouth" was broadcast there in July 1930. Thus one can say that television started off in the heart of United States and the television station was located in South Eastern New York at the mouth of the Hudson River. The station began broadcasting seven days a week on July 21, 1931. This was a television channel or station that broadcast on the terrestrial mode as that was the only mode available then. The bandwidth was then highly confined and this led to a high control by the government. Yet, from the beginning television has been highly used for advertising. Organizing the TV programs that are to be broadcast can be worked out either as a direct production by the manufacturers and then selling to the station that intends to buy it. Sometimes the production itself is paid for by the TV station that will show it. (Television)
In other cases the station issues a license to the producers to produce the show for the channel. The show is sometimes carried on in other centers after the show is over on the main channel. In TV terminology this is called secondary programming usage. The secondary shows may be in the original country where the show was produced or in other countries from where the channels are interested in the show. The shows may be controlled by the original producer or not depending on the agreement. Sometimes a group of TV stations run some common programs in their own interest, or through an individual. This is called syndication and the show may be sold by the producers themselves or their agents. Yet with all this it has been seen that doctors recommend that children should only see TV for an hour or two at the maximum in the day.
Excess of TV viewing is known to cause various diseases like ADD, excessive weight and heart problems. These may lead to diabetes or excess aggression. Thus it is clear that viewing of Television is not recommended in a high dosage for anybody, and the problem in our country is made worse by the situation of having a number of stations at every town or city due to the possibility of multiple channels being available now. These channels can also be seen on the set through a cable and the customer only has to pay a monthly fee. This is the problem that was envisaged by Postman quite a few years ago, and possibly he foresaw the worsening of the situation due to the advent of cable TV. The problem was also made clear by the decline of the family in the country and as a result the children are being left with only one parent. Most of the time, the single parent is working and is not able to attend to the child when the child comes back from school. These let the child free with the television and see any program of their choice. (Television)
Neil Postman is an...
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