Having fun to death: it's time to stop laughingThe form of communication created by television is not only part of the way our modern society communicates, but it has changed public discourse to the point where it has completely redefined it, argued Neil Postman in his compelling book Amusing Ourselves to Death. He considered this very harmful, and furthermore because our society ignores it and quickly allows itself to be swallowed up by its epistemology. Faced with the question of whether television shapes or reflects culture, Postman pointed out that this question is no longer applicable because “television has gradually become our culture” (79). What kind of culture is this? Postman warned that this is an area in which we are educated and informed in the form of entertainment, and through such media we become boring, ignorant of real issues and amused to the very possible death cultural. Today, sixteen years after the book's publication, he would likely have a similar (though perhaps more impassioned) message to say about our current culture, particularly in the areas of education and the evening news, which gradually deteriorated. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, he compared their views on the future of information. Orwell's view was that we would be defeated by a controlling force and books would be banned, leaving us without proper information or instructions. Huxley, for his part, suggested that the silencing of information might not be the problem. Instead, it would be the bulk flooding our culture that would make us ignorant. We would have so many choices, both useful and useless, that we would be indifferent middle of paper......information invades the living room, they wonder why they are being deceived and misled. Or worse, they don't even realize it. We are not a culture known for thinking. We are perhaps best known for our entertainment. Only by dividing these two areas can we be better informed. Neil Postman, comparing the theories of Orwell and Huxley, said: “[Our threat of being deprived of appropriate information] is not watching us, by his choice. We monitor it, through our own” (155). His argument was that, by our own choice, we are misinformed. In our “information age,” we have intelligent books, newspapers, magazines, and other sources of information that have not been greatly affected by television culture. We just need to stop laughing and seek to be properly informed. Works Cited: Postman, Neil. Having fun to death. New York: books about penguins, 1985.