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Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
As a television show, and a good one, "Sesame Street" does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
We rarely talk about television, only about what’s on television
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information-misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information-information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
From How to Watch TV News
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
In other words, so far as many reputable studies are concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning, is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order, inferential thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
As a television show, and a good one, "Sesame Street" does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
We rarely talk about television, only about what’s on television
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information-misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information-information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
From How to Watch TV News
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
In other words, so far as many reputable studies are concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning, is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order, inferential thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
As a television show, and a good one, "Sesame Street" does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
We rarely talk about television, only about what’s on television
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of "being informed" by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information-misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information-information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
From How to Watch TV News
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
In other words, so far as many reputable studies are concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning, is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order, inferential thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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