While reading chapter four of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman brought up the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and says that the Americans back then would watch the debate for up to seven hours. “But who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?”… “These were people who regarded such events as essential to their social lives, and who were quite accustomed to extend oratorical performances.” Postman then states that Americans now won’t even last three hours at a debate conference. This got me to think, if Americans then watched those debates for up to seven hours, why can’t we? Americans can watch television for practically the whole day, but why don’t we have the initiative to be part of such event? I doubt that we have any more debates that last that long, but if we did, would many people show up? Do Americans these days have decent political education, if not any?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Well see the thing is Daniel is that people now days would consider that boring. The reason why is because people only want to participate in activities that interest them. Which mostly invovles some sort of "exciting new" technology. Only a few million would actually sit through a debate like that because they feel its their initiative because we are a country that is based on the people. The others would rather just watch the world destroy itself around them and not even think that some of these political choices will affect their future generations. People are lazy and selfish because its just human nature to think about yourself first. Once everyone steps out of their safe zone then will we have a country that actually thinks as a unity. But the question is will that ever happen?
ReplyDeleteFor starters, I don’t know anybody who has the attention span of seven hours. Technology has changed our views on what is entertaining. So unlike a hundred fifty years ago, a seven hour debate would not interest many people today. In addition to people today having a limited interest in many topics, technology has also created a difference in the time people remain interested in a certain topic.
ReplyDeleteFor example, the average television show is half an hour to an hour long. Most songs today last less than four minutes. These aren’t just random numbers that the television operators came up with. This is how long people can remain interested in a television show, or a music video. Internet sites allow us to interact instantly with people across the country. All this new advances in technology has made it so we expect everything to be instant, or fast. I think it has created a shorter attention span in people of today’s world and that is why few of us would have an interest in a seven hour debate on politics.
I asked myself the same questions when I was reading chapter four, but then I realized why we have such short attention spans. Now that there is new technology things are completely different. We find different things entertaining and amusing. We are accustomed to having fun with electronics and not with long debates. Even if we tried to listen to a seven hour long debates we would not fully achieve anything. Most of us would just sit there, let our minds wonder and not grasp the concept of the lecture that was being discussed. Electronics such as televisions have caused us to have short attention spans. As you can see even television shows are made no longer than an hour.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone who has commented, and I agree with Daniel. The main reason why most people in the world today couldn't watch that long of a debate is because of our short attention spans. With technology, as Postman had said, we are being amused in a whole new way. Back then, they didn't have the up-to-date technology that we have. Also, Postman had talked about how during this time period before ours, libraries and schools were starting to spread like wild fire. Hundreds of thousands of books were being produced- and actually read. Most people nowadays (including myself, to be honest) hardly ever even visit the library. This means that people in the past had become more literate than most people are today. We are so fascinated with high-tech gadgets and gizmos, that we forget about literate activities.
ReplyDelete