Amusing Ourselves to Death

Postman's warning that the danger was never Orwell's boot but Huxley's pleasure: that television was quietly reshaping public life into entertainment, and a public trained to be entertained forgets how to govern itself. He wrote before the smartphone, which has only proved him right and then some. The argument is that the form of a medium shapes the thought it can carry, and that a politics conducted as spectacle cannot stay serious. Read it next to the feed in your hand.

The media theorist who argued that the form of a medium shapes the thought it can carry, and that television was quietly remaking public life in its own image. Amusing Ourselves to Death warns that the danger was never Orwell's boot but Huxley's pleasure: a public so entertained it forgets to govern itself. He wrote before the smartphone, which has only sharpened his case.