Amusing Ourselves to Death Study Guide

Postman is an American author, cultural critic, theorist and educator. Born in New York City, he played baseball through college before becoming interested in an academic career. He received a Master’s Degree from Columbia University’s teacher’s college, and went on to be affiliated with New York University for about 40 years. He was a prolific writer, and served as a department chair and professor at NYU until his death from lung cancer in 2003. He is best known for his works Amusing Ourselves to Death, Technopoly, and The End of Education.

The increasing ubiquity of television in America is at the center of this book’s set of concerns. When Postman was writing, computers were becoming more common, but the Internet had not been theorized in any concrete way yet. Postman’s account surmises that one of the greatest threats to American life and liberty in 1985 is the proliferation of televisions and television programming.

Postman repeatedly references both Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and 1984 by George Orwell. Postman aims to show that Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future is more correct than Orwell’s. Postman also references the work of the philosopher of communication and public intellectual Marshall McLuhan quite frequently, and Postman’s project builds off of McLuhan’s work, especially The Gutenberg Galaxy.