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Jan's avatar

This post reminds me of a book I read some years ago by Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in The Age of Show Business”. The Editorial Editor of my local newspaper recommended the book to me. First written in 1985, it was re-published in 2005. Postman wrote about the way electronic media was shaping our culture.

In the Forward of the book, Postman compares Orwell’s “1984” with Huxley’s “Brave New World”. . He says”Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history...people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” In another couple of sentences further down the page, Postman says, “Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” In fact, the Forward of the book spells out what we are seeing today. Amazing. That said, I keep the Forward of this book in my head as I look at the mess of social media.

I have spent the weekend reading a murder mystery. The protagonist is a woman who makes her living as a fishing guide and sometimes private investigator. The setting is Florida area of Ft. Myers/Captiva. The story is intertwined with Florida history and descriptions of flora and fauna. It’s a welcome break from the news cycle.

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Hopkins Stanley's avatar

Much thanks for your wonderful words on the magic of reading physical books. Early in the electronic revolution I found reading books with an app on my iPad didn’t compare to reading hard-copy books. Even though I could underline and make notations in electronic books; it wasn’t the same for me as physically underling various passages resonating with my thoughts while bracketing/parsing out their particular parts. I also found the physical act of writing notes/annotations in a book’s margins and going back to read what I’d inscribed was a part integrating my thoughts/experiences of reading a book that Kindle didn’t. At first I thought it was just a dyslexic “oddity” I shared with a few other dyslexic folks I’d known. Later I figured out it was also a weird Derridian habit I’d acquired to slow down the speed reading habits I’d been taught as a youngster…

On the other hand, I’ve found having internet access to quickly lookup a word or notion I’m unfamiliar with is an indispensably tool to my physically reading a book. I’ve also found word “processing” an indispensable tool when I’m editing and clarifying my dyslexic thoughts when writing something. All of this reminds me in my simplistic understandings of late Heidegger’s concerns over losing our humanity to technology vs. using technology as an appropriate tool for a given task at hand. I think this is a very fine line we walk of maintaining our “humanity” while using our technology rather than becoming subsumed into “standing reserve” for mechanical exploitation by technology. I’m very grateful to Professor Snyder for his continual reminding us of the importance of shared historical backgrounds we need to evaluate and safely use our evolving technologies in “appropriate ways”. Much thanks for your effort to keep us focused on our shared, historical backgrounds…

Please excuse mechanical typos & autocorrect strangeness...

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