Diary of Anne Frank 2025. Easter Sunday April 20, 2025 - trivialization and mocking of comprehension and understanding abounds. Mass dehumanization via worship of trivia and superficiality
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding (year 1995) of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995
Carl Sagan, teacher and educator, who was often in mass media systems was not the first to give the warning about loss of society to media systems of "10 seconds or less" behaviors, memes that fit the Apple iPhone screen size, HDTV Fox News, etc. A decade earlier in 1985, Neil Postman (educator / teacher) also made a prediction about America's future.
"My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it's not Orwell, he warned, it's Brave New World. The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right." - Andrew Postman. February 2, 2017
This is the USA Sunday April 20, 2025.
“Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television”
I haven't read it, thanks for the pointer.
Boy, the same concept applied to the iPad and iPhone medium and technology....