Arising from the dead much to Neil Postman's dismay

When I purchased Neil Postman’s "Amusing Ourselves to Death,” one thing that stood out to me was how old the book was. Postman published the book 23 years ago…that’s as old as me! The focus of my review of his book will be about how two different generations could view this book differently.
The first generation’s interpretation I will focus on is that of my own, the younger more tech-savvy generation. For someone in this generation, Postman’s book might evoke the question of “Why does he hate technology?” The truth is, at least from my perspective, Postman does not hate technology, he only criticizes its relevance and purpose. For instance, my generation has grown up watching television as a form of entertainment. From the early years of watching cartoons and now MTV, it has always been about entertainment. In the book, Postman states, “The problem is not what television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that subject matter is presented as entertaining…” Postman wouldn’t be happy to learn that according to Nielsen Media Research, TV remains the top forms of entertainment even amongst the younger generation. This new generation enjoys visually-enticing, ‘flashy’ forms of media which can be found on many shows including the nightly news.
Now I rewind about 25-30 years ago where people were still somewhat adjusting to the entertainment value of TV. Compared to today’s world there was not nearly as much entertainment on the tube. I view Postman as somewhat “old-fashioned” and really dwelling on the television’s early years compared to where it was even in 1985. If he were to write a similar book today, he’d probably have a heart attack in the process. People of yester-year viewed the change in media towards entertainment differently because it was not what they grew up with. People do not like change and that’s exactly what all forms of media have done over their year’s development. However, research from lostremote.com shows that adults are adapting to the new forms of entertaining media such as YouTube which may eventually replace TV all together.
The only similarity I see between how the two generations view the book is the importance of developing media literacy as stressed in W. James Potter’s book, “Media Literacy.” Young or old, it is definitely vital to effectively interpret the millions of sources of media that we are exposed to in our lives.