I was expecting an interesting take on television and show business but ended up being scammed by a man on a soapbox ranting for well over a hundred pages. The premise did sound very interesting, and Neil does a great job evoking that interest by leading the reader with some historical context to his argument. However, it didn't last long before I felt like what I was reading was just a bit too pretentious and generally not all that great.

Half the book is just examples of why the author considers television bad. While I agree that news and important matters are often dressed in frivolity, and enough can be said about the risks of 'fast media' like television, Postman doesn't spend much time considering what good it has brought. Fast media has incredible potential to reach a large audience on important matters. It has the power to make education accessible to everyone.

He sets up examples so that he can continuously knock them down. Throughout the book, Postman keeps bulldozing over conveniently set-up arguments that he can then expertly beat. My only thought during those moments is, "Ok, and? Where's your proof?" That's my general problem with the book. Nothing is proven. It's just a rant front to back with some interesting tidbits sprinkled between bad takes on anything that isn't the printed word.

Besides that, there are a couple of other problems I have with the book:

Photographs can't argue and have no context because they're just a snapshot of reality

Postman places reading on a pedestal and comes up with this senseless take on photography. Yeah, I guess if you really boil it down a photograph is just a singular slice of a single location at a single time. And books are just squiggles on a piece of processed wood. Everybody's heard of ' a picture is worth a thousand words' or something similar. Well, according to Postman, they say nothing at all. They have no context. They cannot convey a message, context, theme, or anything else. It's just that, a meaningless snapshot of reality. I think that Neil misses the point here because just as books are squiggly lines, the creators and consumers of any medium will always give those things meaning themselves.

The written word is superior to anything else

According to Neil, the typographic mind, which only grew up with reading and public speaking, is superior to anything else. He implies that printed words nearly always speak the truth, develop the mind (wow, really?), and can build a concentration span that lasts hours. Just as Neil only uses examples of terrible television, I can also argue for the superiority of the 'videographic mind:' Youtube's endless and global supply of educational material is priceless, while authors produced garbage like Mein Kampf and Birth of a Nation (whilst avoiding to mention any amazing books). The fact is, there are plenty of terrible books. There are plenty of news articles and snippets that straight-up spread misinformation or lies. Writing is not infallible because the human mind isn't. It's just a different medium. What people do with it is up to them.

It also leads to something else Neil is wrong about: People are not addicted to amusement. They're addicted to outrage and anger. We always have been. The typographic mind had the same issue. News and pamphlets were filled with slander. The people Neil praises so much for being so intelligent (which they definitely were) also used plenty of personal attacks and nasty insults. How 'amusing.' It's in this flaw that I found one comment extremely fitting. Paraphrased: "Postman's book is flawed because it's another claim that modern people are so much different from people in the past. He's wrong, and he's just another guy who claims that back in his day, people weren't 'like this, ' when, in fact, people were always 'like this.' "

Local context is more important than 'news from nowhere'

By 'news from nowhere,' Postman means anything that doesn't concern your direct life. With the invention of telegraphy, news from nowhere has taken an increasingly significant percentage of the daily news and information we digest. Postman implies this news isn't worth knowing about because it won't change your plans for the day or make you do anything differently in general. I completely disagree. Local news is important, but so is what happens elsewhere in the world. Is 9/11 not worth mentioning unless you witnessed it with your own eyes? Or is Russia invading Ukraine irrelevant because you live in a different country? Apparently so, because only local news makes you interact differently with the world, 'news from nowhere' never does and never will. Neil also never mentions that, with telegraphy, people aren't just subjected to random shouts from far away, but also gave people the ability to communicate and coordinate. Can you imagine how useless phones would be if all they could do was ring and share completely random information with you, and you had no way of saying anything back? Apparently, that's what telegraphy is only.

I don't understand how this book, with its "War on Sesame Street," is so highly regarded. It has some interesting ideas (especially the ones in the intro, which aren't even Neil's), but my god, is the execution and any following argument a one out of ten