[quartesixte]

>He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.

Or as Postman himself put it, "the medium is the metaphor". And he strongly disliked the metaphor TV was bringing to bear on the Western World.

And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.

[judofyr]

> And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.

This is a good point as well! When reading it I was reflecting on how internet compares to 1980s television. Yes, it has much more dopamine-fueled content, but it's way less of a monoculture. It gives a lot of opportunity for people to seek out what they're interested in and there's hundreds (thousands?) of communities with very different set of thoughts.

[quartesixte]

You also can't create actively yourself! TV was definitely a consumer only culture, with all creation heavily gatekept by an entire industry. Compare this to the print culture prior to that.

The Internet definitely has changed this, and now we are back into a creation capable metaphor.