I picked up this book thinking it would be a reasonably light look at the ways in which our society is reacting to the information and entertainment overload that television - and other modern communication technologies - bombard us with. In a way, that's what this book examines. But it's not a very light read, and it's more focused on propagation of "serious" information than I expected. Both of these things are pretty exciting to me, but it does make this a different book than I'd been led to believe. This isn't some fluff piece on why we need to watch less television, it's a condemnation of the way in which our society has functioned since our move from a primarily typographic information flow to a primarily audiovisual one.

There are two concepts that I think are important to understand before reading this book. And since there's an entire chapter dedicated to how knowledge is hierarchical and television is screwing with that, I think it's important to mention them. First, the medium through which we obtain information can affect the way we perceive and recall the information. As [a:Marshall McLuhan|455|Marshall McLuhan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1500626935p2/455.jpg] said (and is quoted many times in this book as saying) "the medium is the message." There is a difference between what you'll take from a book and a movie, even if they tell the same story with the same themes. Second, our perceptions of what constitute "facts," "trustworthiness," and "evidence" are not fixed. They can differ over time, they can differ depending on the information, and they can differ depending on where the information is coming from. This is important because this book is largely trying to lay out an epistemological argument for why society is worse off, and a bare minimum of understanding what epistemology is helps with grasping the arguments being made.

Now, in regards to actually reviewing the book, I think it's not only a well-written, well-structured, and well-researched book, it's also pretty entertaining in and of itself. Postman is well aware of his biases, having spent much of his life influenced by the same epistemological system that he condemns, and is quick to point out ironic or seemingly contradictory points in his arguments. The book is filled with both historical and contemporary examples, many of which are dated but popular enough that people should still get the gist of them, and the contrast he draws between typographic America and audiovisual America is equal parts amusing, enlightening, and terrifying. I would say it reads more like an essay than a typical non-fiction book, but that doesn't harm it at all. If anything, it is stronger for it; there are about six pages of footnotes and two-and-a-half pages of bibliography in the back of the book, which really helps reinforce that this isn't being pulled out of Postman's rear end.

Postman starts off by laying out the way in which public discourse occurred in 18th/19th century America - i.e. the way things used to be. It's an interesting read, and although it feels like he's giving too much credit to early Americans he does lay out pretty clearly how different politics and religion were before the modern era. He then goes into the technologies that caused a shift in our epistemology, the telegraph and the photograph, and talks about the historical changes that those technologies made on public discourse. There are a couple points that I think he attributes too strongly to the technologies and not enough to other societal changes, but they don't do much to weaken his argument and he makes a good case that these technologies, while important and amazing, had side effects that weakened public discourse. The latter half-ish of the book is focused on modern (at least, as of 1985 or so) public discourse and the way in which the television has pushed an epistemology that, on the whole, is worse than the old typographic one. There is the odd time he exaggerates a point, or feels like he's stretching a little, or neglects to mention the positives of the audiovisual epistemology, but altogether his argument is sound and he brings up many points that really change up the way I view modern society. He even managed to ruin Sesame Street for me, the jerk.

Now, it's important to take this book in its historical context - before the internet, when microcomputers were just starting to be a thing - but this book still manages to be a good look at how society developed as it has for the past century and makes a lot of relevant points about people's varying views on politics, science, religion, and public education. I think we're starting to move out of a television-centric world with the advent of the internet and social media, but the questions Postman asks us about how technology influences the way we think and learn and the points he makes about living in "the age of show business" are still very relevant. In fact, I would consider this book to be vitally important for anyone who wants to really learn something in today's world. Because if you can't be conscious of the biases present in whatever medium information is filtered through, you can't really be sure what you've learned at all.