For those who haven’t read the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is incredible, and absolutely worth reading. One of my mentors gave it to me years ago and it became one of those mind blowing reads.

In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the examples are books, newspapers, tv, radio, etc. But so much of social media seems obvious once you read his analysis.

Every time I see the typical discussion (person A: social media makes people dumb; person B: Plato said books make people dumb) I think that the discussion could use some Postman - not all media affects us in the same way - some media encourages behaviors that are good for society, and some media encourages behaviors that are bad for society.

This goes beyond media entertainment. All of our senses are being exploited and overstimulated for commercial gains. Food, perfumes, music, furniture. People crave for saltiest or sweetest food. They fill their noses with strong artificial fragrances, their heads with loud, distracting, catchy music, all the while butt-slouched on the comfiest couches or beds. If this continues on, there will be a point where humanity will be so desensitized and can no longer feel anything natural with their own senses.

Original comic source: https://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ours... (archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20100111052839/http://www.recomb...)

HN discussion from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733

Wikipedia entry for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

People make too much of what Orwell supposedly feared may happen some day. He was writing about stuff the Soviet and British governments were doing in his time, and in particular, imagined what Soviet rule over Britain may look like. Assigning this philosophy to him and criticizing him for it seems unfair.

Content from Amusing Ourselves to Death presented as a visual comic to facilitate/"enhance" its communication is deeply ironic. Can't wait for the TikTok video.

A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements … they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship.

A game of chess does not add a single new fact to the mind; it does not excite a single beautiful thought; nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and improving the nobler faculties.

Scientific American, July, 1858

[0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-conce...

Given that the vast majority of people go to work to earn money for businesses that exist either to exploit natural resources or appreciate in value in the eyes of an economic system that prioritizes increasing capital valuations above all else, including human dignity, long-term survival and the life of other species, I would say we're already there.

Talking about a dystopian future is a convenient way to assuade our sense of dissonance that the present is most certainly not that.

Case in point, nobody wants to rid the Earth of insects, fill the oceans with plastic or plough microplastics into every orifice, but we are all complicit and can't seem to gather ourselves to fix it.

The sad thing is that none of it is very amusing. Current events twitter is more aggravating than amusing. We're aggravating ourselves to death.

A couple of years ago i was working for a design studio which produced an image movie for a big cooperation which somehow painted an utopian future for their upcoming product ideas. In that movie there was a woman reading in "Brave new World".[EDITED] It was clear none of the people involved read the book. My remarks were swept aside by claiming hardly anyone has read the book anyway... headlessness might be a real issue.

Live Neil Postman. Discovered him around 2016 and read many of his books. And planning to regularly reread him.

So many things changed since he died but his ideas hold up pretty good.

Doing things merely to stimulate pleasurable brain chemistry is fine unless all you do is play games or watch formulaic media that have no lasting effect or achievement.

> incredible, and absolutely worth reading ... so much of social media seems obvious once you read his analysis (richk449)

> dated ... commentary on the evils of tv (zetsurin)

Hmm... I suppose both of these could be accurate.

For a novel about this (among many other things, including semi professional tennis) you might be interested in Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.[0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest

Given the current pro-war propaganda all over the place combined with the creeping cost of living, I think Nineteen Eighty-Four is becoming more prescient than Brave New World.

The article just lifts the content from the book and doesn’t add anything original. Great. We’ve heard.

This comic misses some of my favorite details from the book.

The book talks a lot about Marshall McLuhan's quote "the medium is the message" and about how discourse has turned more and more into entertainment. Nixon lost to Kennedy because he was more attractive on television, and people are judged by how they look or behave as opposed to what they say.

More than anything, this book really made me appreciate written discourse.

People always reference 1984 but Orwell’s essay “Pleasure Spots” is probably more relevant to this subject: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

   Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly the same way as before

          …wake up

I just listened to this a few weeks ago. It’s incredible and really helps frame how we got here and is still very relevant to social media even though it’s written about TV/Hollywood. You’ll be hard pressed to find deeper media analysis that remains very approachable.

The book's title is a nod to the Roger Waters album/song that deals with the same theme.

Dopamine is one hell of a drug.

Legendary comment from the old boy Terry Davis as the top post there.

I find it really strange that the 3 paragraphs of text at the top needed the comics summarizing them below. Like, did our short attention spans need those little footholds in order to progress through the point being made? :)

Sounds like I need this book added to my reading list. I've not been able to get through Brave New World, but I might give it another try also.

Huxley’s fears presented in this particular way are immediately debunked by actual book sales and education statistics.

Independent bookstores have been consistently growing since 2009: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpol...

The book industry is expanding with particularly strong growth in e-books and audiobooks: https://worldmetrics.org/book-industry-statistics/

Educational attainment is generally increasing as time goes on in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...

Voter turnout has increased over time in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...

If anything I think that the general population is becoming more aware and educated.

A more diversified leisure industry with more options than the days of having three channels on television is not the same as drowning in amusement, or the average person spending more time on amusement than on “serious” and “thoughtful” activities. Instead, it means that the individual has more options for forms of amusement they enjoy.

Brave New World supposes a world of plenty controlled by a few ruling oligarchs and aristocrats; 1984 supposes a world of scarcity also controlled by a few ruling oligarchs and aristocrats. One society is controlled by the carrot, and in the other society, given the shortage of carrots, the stick is brought out to maintain the social order.

The book came out in 2005.

Was there any follow up, I didn't see one on the wiki.

It seems like we are accelerating to this.

Even the changes between 2005 and 2024. Near 20 years, we've leaned into the Huxley vision. Really leaned into it.

This is all getting really scary. I feel like we should do something. We should really band together and change course. I volunteer to go out and do something, except of course, I'm a bit distracted at the moment, so maybe can we put off the change for another week? I really need to see the end of this season of "Industry". Then we can do something, I'm sure I'll have some free time next week to get right on this.

(2014)

Thinly veiled 'I despise stupid people', this one.

They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?

It's not what stupid people do in their free time - it's what capable and smart people value and pursue that makes all the difference.

Nietzsche laid this out quite beautifully in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Huxley and Orwell are kindergarten philosophy by comparison.

It is interesting that these two books essentially show the most extreme end result of the two major economic systems. Socialist authoritarian communist states gravitate towards 1984, capitalist liberal democracies turn into Brave New World.

Think more about Attention. Not about Information.

Information is exploding and global available Attention doesn't grow. People who pay attention to one thing, can't use the same time to pay attention to something else.

So govts and corps fight over this common pool of Attention using the Media (TV/Movies/Radio/Social/News/Sports/Gaming etc etc), just like they fought over land and oil and other natural resources. Media is literally used like front line troops of colonial empires in Attention capture wars.

But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that vision. Until then people working in Attention Capture fields will keep amusing us to death.

Brave New World and 1984 are books to avoid every extreme on politics, either left or right (put every Monopoly neocon fanboy, racist non-civic nationalist or burocratic socialist in there).

1984 looked scary, but BNW was hopeless. It exerced a much better control. The world of 1984 collapsed down itself.

It's amazing that solving death and aging is not Goal #1 of every rich and poor person on the planet. Death is coming for you and you're trying to get rich? Engaging in politics? Fighting? What's that gonna do when you're falling apart in real time?

We're all dying fast. Medical industry can't stop it either, they don't know how. Nobody does.

Yet nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.

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A person running for president of this country comes from show business and there are venture capitalists like Mark Andreeson who seriously talk about him as somebody who knows policy all because they can get a seat at the table.

Hey guys, what if good things were actually bad? Wow!! Instead of enjoying ourselves we should instead spend eight hours a day intently studying woodworking & tax policy. The fact that people enjoy talking to each other and looking at cat pictures on social media proves that people will accept fascism and that Western liberal democracy is fated for impotence.