Many of them are Baby Boomers or Gen Xers who were exposed to plenty of education and critical thinking as they were growing up. However, there's the idea that in the information age, we are bombarded with so much information and stimulation that it is hard to begin to filter out the junk. It becomes much easier to simply pick a single source of information and label that as "trusted", than to be constantly scrutinizing all the information you get from everywhere.
This phenomenon was predicted as far back as the 80s, with the rise of cable TV and mass media advertising. There's an interesting part of a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death (https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X) where the author proposes that modern governments don't need to limit the amount of information their citizens have access to in order to control them. All they have to do is overload them with nonsense, making them unable to effectively process the quality information they do receive.
I am hopeful for the future, because our current generation was raised in the Information Age, and we've been exposed to this environment since our early years. We are more adept at navigating the internet, and therefore investigating the reliability of our sources of information. Our relative youth makes us less stubborn than people in their 50s or 60s.
Does anyone have an opinion on the quoted book?
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By Neil Postman
IMO with very few exceptions, journalists have done a good job of reporting every blip but a piss-poor job of helping people understand what those blips add up to. They have made the public savant-idiots: we have heard so much about everything -- blip! blip! blip! blip! -- that we end up knowing nothing at all.
That is exactly why I came to this sub-reddit in the first place, and why I've ended up participating: to try to sort out what is indisputable fact, what is interesting speculation, what is interesting but non-essential, etc.
I have found Seth Abramson's work in my personal sorting-out process to be extremely useful -- and far more useful than the confusing "battle of the talking heads" that goes on at CNN, for example. The coverage at The Atlantic has been stellar, but it tends to be siloed where Seth finds interesting and revealing bridges across silos.
I thoroughly agree that we are at a moment when truth is under daily, cynical assault. But I think Abramson generally does a better job of separating "this is true" from "this might be true" than most of what passes for journalism these days.
P.S. Used carefully, digital as a medium is far superior to TV for purposes of sorting out truth from speculation. CNN, MSNNC, Fox et al are mostly useful for Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Abramson isn't perfect, but he's light years away from spreading Pizzagate-like nonsense. I think most of us can read what he has to say without getting carried away.
Yep. I've been recommending Postman's book for years:
>What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
Even if I could, it doesn't sound like they'd listen to me. Do they limit which books? If not, why not ask for Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, or Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World for your gaming interests (I assume you're interested, since you're in r/gaming), for your other interests just look around for books that take a scholarly or approach to them. Who knows maybe your parents will end up reading them and end up broadening their (extremely) narrow worldview?
Another text I found mildly helpful was Snoman's Dance Music Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Music-Manual-Second-Techniques/dp/0240521072. I don't think its amazing, but there are some interesting analyses of specific types of EDM.
I once got a ~30 page .pdf from a professor, but it was because he had literally written the book we were using for the course. The book store was charging somewhere above $100 for the brand new edition so he told us to just buy the old one (no more than ~$20, brand new) and sent us all the pages that had been added/changed. :D
edit: this was many years ago so this isn't the actual edition in question, but shoutout to Ken Pohlmann anyways.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
The title in the comment was a joke.
You’ll enjoy it. It’s about the way media has been deliberately dumbed down to the point where actors and idiots are now treated as serious sources of information, and how that process has poisoned modern life and politics.
Just look at the reviews on Amazon!
I think Neil Postman should be required reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman. Check it out. It's going down in real time and we're all eating it up. Times have changed slightly since then, as Postman was mostly exploring the negative impacts of television media. But modern changes have only exacerbated the problem, looking at the onset of meme propaganda and social media.
https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X
This just helps put America's obsession with "celebrities" on full display. We rarely care enough to get the names of those not famous unless it was somehow entertaining, and this could be for better, or worse.
I'm really sorry she was shoved to the ground. I'm really sorry that America continues to show why it is a country with deep-rooted problems that no one wants to really delve into because we're too busy amusing ourselves to death.
The invention of the telegraph.
Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. It's not a historical piece per say. It's about communication theory. One argument he makes is that the way we ingest the news/information suddenly changed once far off, clandestine information could be shared immediately following the invention of the telegraph.
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Information is power, and virtually all other technological progress after its invention would have been impacted by the telegraph. Engineers could talk across the country. Investors, bankers, and wealthy persons could react to news within a week or two of it occurring. Military incursions were felt immediately by a nation. Suddenly, our world became a lot smaller and collective action became a lot more feasible. It doesn't matter how you spin it. Electrically-transmitted information fundamentally altered the way we engage everything.
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Moreover, everything that defines the "modern" information era is a product of the telegraph and the technologies that evolved from it. Its winners are those with the best information and influence as opposed to those with the biggest military, strongest religious argument, deepest pockets, etc. The best possible example? Elon Musk doesn't own amazing companies. He's wealthy as hell because he created a brand that persuaded/influenced people to invest time, effort, and (most importantly) money into his companies, enriching himself. If Twitter didn't exist, Elon would not be half as wealthy as he is today.
Thanks guys. I think I found one he’d like, though I’m interested in all the other suggestions too.
Look, lets assume there is a 'pure' media and a 'pure' entertainment outlet.
They are both operating for profit, the majority of what US consumers consume is controlled by 4-5 corporations. That is the problem. The only difference is that all news media is explicitly written on the backs of advertisers.
You may find the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" interesting and also Ben Bagdikian's 1983 book "Media Monopoly", wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bagdikian#The_Media_Monopoly
> "This gives each of the five corporations and their leaders more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history."
Yeah what you posted sounds like a more realistic version of that Graeber article.
> but fail to see that widespread automation has the ability to grant the freedom of not having to work to a large part of society. People losing their jobs because their labour not being needed anymore is not a bad thing, but opens a path to a utopia of widespread freedom
I am not sold on the idea that it would lead to a utopia. Like, I think we should utilize technology to automate the jobs we can, and provide basic Universal Income that covers housing, food, and rudimentary entertainment to all the folks that lose their jobs. Allow the Capitalist system to work, too, so that people who either have some skill or a desire to own yachts can muck about in the revenue generating game.
But I think Vonnegut's Player Piano does offer a reasonable insight to a realistic problem. If a person does not have a job, and their basic needs are met through government assistance, then what do they spend their time on? Either we get Vonnegut's projection where wide swaths of society sit around drinking gin, or a good chunk of the human race just Amuses ourselves to death.
Like I'm all for automation and UBI and freedom, but I do not imagine that even in that society things would be swell.
Counterpoint: you're not just simplifying your presentation, you're simplifying your thinking, which stands to make your thinking worse. Some things really are just complicated. I feel like I've seen something written by Scott Alexander, or maybe some other rationalist, talking about how complicated aerodynamics is, and how it really doesn't lend itself to simplicity ("the air travels faster over the top of the wing, generating lift" doesn't explain airplanes that can fly upside-down)--this potentially applies here.
University students often struggle through prose and would prefer to simply see bullet-points. But sometimes wrestling with prose is as much the point as any single bullet-point you could derive from it. Or in other words: efficiency often comes with hidden costs.
I said it's a cornerstone of knowledge, not that it has a good ending.
It's essential for people to read books like this against tyranny. There is no other medium that is so densely-packed with information and lends itself to the formation of abstract concepts than the written word. I recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death for a detailed account of the neuroscience of why TV and other mediums are vastly inferior for learning and building knowledge.
I think you’re right that it’s nearly impossible to quantify the effect. But there’s a fascinating book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death that tackles the long term impact of television (not just the news) on politics, education, advertising, etc. It basically argues that the TV medium has gradually altered how our brains work, and made it harder for us to digest more complicated and nuanced arguments. Think hours-long Lincoln-Douglas debates vs. modern 30-second sound bites. Brilliant analysis and a somewhat terrifying read. Highly recommended.
A photographer/video game collector named Evan Amos. Pretty much all of the photos on Wikipedia of game consoles are his photos. He's also published book of his photos called "The Game Console: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox."
If you need something that you can mention at a party or in an interview that'll make you feel smart, I'd suggest Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. It's the kind of book you can bring up to make yourself seem smart, but unlike Atlas Shrugged it's actually interesting to read and has some (largely) insightful ideas about technology.
Alternatively, if you need something more fun to read, I would suggest Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. It's a pretty fun fantasy romp that is largely enjoyable to read if you want to turn off your brain.
Cosign the Postman book rec, here's the Bezos link.
But having discussions on important events is something we do far too little in our society. We need to encourage discourse and critical thinking so as to better ward ourselves against things like the recent Catholic Schoolboys VS Indigenous peoples march ruckus.
We already avoid political conversations, at least in the US, far more than we should. We even have large sections of the population that claim their ignorance on politics like it's a badge of courage and not one of shame.
The Greek root of the word idiot is very relevant to todays age. I've known several idiots who will tell you their political ideas followed promptly by an exclamation that they don't follow politics and don't want to discuss them as a defense of having their lacking values scrutinized.
So yes, have debates with strangers online. Encourage rational discourse. Push into uncomfortable topics that put people on edge because we do that far too infrequently and the human brain is very much like a muscle. We don't exercise our mental capabilities enough. We indulge in worthless mental sweets like reality television and shy away from behaviors that are healthy for our mental faculties. We are literally Amusing Ourselves to Death. We as a people don't benefit from not talking about real issues.
This book helped me improve with Reason a lot. The genre-specific sections are pretty dated now, but it is loaded with great advice on sound design, music theory, and mixing.
Dance Music Manual, Second Edition: Tools, Toys, and Techniques https://www.amazon.com/dp/0240521072/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pV1dBb1P15E5N
One of the most interesting point of the book: if you won't do anything with it, a piece of news isn't as important as what you think it is. If it is really important, then you'll end up learning it through some other channel anyway.
Jitter is not a problem that produces any perceptible impairment, at least not since 1985 when internal re-clocking of the signal and longer sample & hold buffering were implemented in pretty much every DAC on the market. The same is true of quantization noise, and other artifacts brought up by hi-fi woo woo "articles" (read: advertisements), which is below the noise floor of 16-bit LPCM.
Please read the more academic and objective primer (regarded by many engineers as the "Bible" of digital audio): Principles of Digital Audio by AES Society Fellow Ken Pohlmann.