It would be easy to claim that Postman was merely clutching at pearls, if the evidence did not point overwhelmingly toward the aggravation of the problems he identifies. Thus, the endurance to learn and slog through difficult tasks has been diminished by the medium that is very effective in achieving short term gains. According to Postman, whatever good is done by teaching through entertainment is undermined as it forms the learning human to expect education to be exciting. Postman notes that Sesame Street is a prime example of this, though certainly neither the worst nor the only platform that does this. Instead of doing the long, hard work of training minds, much of our educational methodology has shifted to entertainment. Not only has news changed, but education has changed. Notably, it is much easier for me to find out about the personal lives of political leaders across the globe than to find out what the local city council is talking about. The change was not wrought overnight, but the shift of concern from local issues to global ones has completely overtaken us today. The telegraph sped up the spread of national and international news, so that information could be had within minutes rather than days or weeks. In other words, the facts of the news are the same (if written well), but the secondary signals created by the means that the news is transmitted also shape the reception of the news.įor example, Postman notes that prior to the invention of the telegraph, most newspapers focused almost exclusively on local news. Postman’s clarification is helpful, since it separates the content of the message from vehicle that carries the message.
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