bleckblog: musings of a community college english teacher

Just now I finished reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves' to Death and found it a worthwhile read, which is good because my students will be writing two essays based on it in the upcoming spring term that begins in a few days. One of the essays will be drawn from an issue (actually, both essays will be drawn from an issue) in the first part of the text that the Postman touches on.

The first of those essays will take that issue, find an onlilne video/ad and a print based document and examine how the two texts tackle the particular issue. The second essay will be a more formal argument, taking an issue and arguing some element of it, backing that up with a bit of research. This is a variation on classes I've taught in the past. It will be interesting to see which issues the students latch on to. I always like it when iedeas and thoughts come together in my mind when I am reading.

Postman makes a number of interesting claims, that I don't necessarily agree with, in the last three chapters (really only two as the final chapter is a something of an appeal, as seen in the title "A Huxleyan Warning." That claim is basically that of the book's title, that we are being duped by amusement and don't even know it when it comes to political, educational, religious and other social discourse. In a number of ways I can't help but agree.

Where I don't agree is when it comes to his, admittedly 20 year old, analysis of computers in the classroom, where he claims we are in danger of doing the same thing there as we did with television. He writes:

"Although I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology, I mention it here because, clearly, Americans have accorded it their customary mindless inattention; which means they will use it as they are told, without a whimper. Thus, a central thesis of computer technology--that the principal difficulty we havein solving problems stems from insufficient data--will go unexamined. Until, years from now, when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light retrieval of data have been of great value to large scale organizations but have solved very little of importance to most people and have created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved. (161)

I like to think that this is just the sort of thinking and examinging done by people in the Computers and Writing community as found at Kairos, Kairosnews, Interversity and the many bloggers and techno-rhetoricians found in the proverbial blogosphere. The folks working in and with venues such as these are taking what Postman considers the expository view, in that they are making and arguing propositions with and about technology. These concerns are not going unexamined. The problem, if there is one, is that this examination is taking place in an academic sphere and little of the discussion is finding its way to the general public who have different concerns, such as paying the rent, knowing who won the game or whatever.

Where I find myself agreeing with Postman is he describes computer technologies (this is 10 years before the internet and the web as we know it more than 10 years ago in its infancy) are continually being co-opted by larger forces that don't necessarily, or at all, have the best insterest of the citizen in mind, but rather the real or imagined needs of the consumer. How much the general public cares or thinks about this sort of thing I don't know.

I wanted to write about one quote of his in particular, one that may have only indirect links to computers, teaching and blogging. Again, Postman writes:

To be rationally considered, any claim--commerical or otherwise--must be in language. More precisely, it must take the form of a proposition, for that is the universe of discourse from which such words as "true" and "false" come. If the universe of discourse is discarded, then the application of empirical tests, logical analysis or any of the other instruments of reason are impotent. (127)

I'm just not sure what I think of this, of the notion that only words can be used to proffer an argument. Clearly I'm using words here to examine this idea, but I'm perplexed by it, not knowing what I think about it (Postman would say I likely "feel" about it, but I avoided that word consciously). I'm just going to leave it at that for now, not knowing what I think and see what comes later. At least Postman would agree with this, that I don't have to have an answer, but I should be puzzling over the question.