Even Nick News is Amused to Death

About a month ago, the show Nick News With Linda Ellerbee came out with an episode called "Middle School Unplugged". In this episode, three technologically attached middle school students took on the challenge of staying "unplugged" for a whole week. When I started the first chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death, this episode instantly popped into my mind. Like Postman, Linda Ellerbee calls this generation the "most connected generation ever". She also stated her concern over the youth of today who confuse technology with real life and as she puts it, has become "a tool of (their own) tools". One of the teenagers who was under this experiment, a fourteen-year old named Wade, admitted his addiction by saying that "technology is part of (his) identity".

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman states that the technologies of today has not only become our form of conversation but the language of our culture. Like Wade, has the culture we exist in formed us into a technology-reliant people? Has technology become the only medium of communication that we possess? Postman argues this position, and as much as I hate to admit, I do agree with him. If the entire world made a decision to "unplug" itself, a state of chaos and bewilderment would fill our lives. Our world would be in disarray. All that we know, through the power of technology, would be lost. So the question I ask is this: Without the aid and power of technology, what would we become?