In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman analyzed the impact of television on modern life. The emergence of the new information technology in the intervening period has altered the landscape dramatically. Yet, apart from a short burst during the Clinton\Lewinsky scandal when the Internet took the lead, television has retained the meta-medium status that Postman originally assigned to it in 1985 (Postman 78). What has changed is the way in which television shapes the epistemology of popular culture.
Postman chronicled the first generation of cognitive mutations that began with the introduction of the telegraph and photography and culminated in the electronic hegemony of television. Slowly, but steadily, a print-based culture was abandoned in the twentieth century and television began to disseminate information as a form of entertainment. Postman had no trouble finding compelling evidence for his thesis. A recent illustration is the way the coverage of political campaigns has come to appropriate the dialect of sporting contests: the effectiveness of the candidates are measured by metaphors drawn from horse racing ("too close to call") and boxing ("the knock-out punch"). Although it takes many linguistic forms, this modus operandi extends to all facets of journalism.
The news is formatted so that it will hold the attention of the audience and that requires that coverage be devoid of protracted periods of solemnity.
Postman characterized this as the invention of a "peek-a-boo world" (Postman 77) and he lamented the fate that it portended. Almost twenty years have passed since he made these observations, and since then television's influence on the epistemology of popular culture has been extended. It now has a profound influence on the formulation of self-identity.
Make no mistake, this influence has not occurred merely as collateral damage. Rather, television has demonstrated an amazing resilience to preserve its status as meta-medium and accelerate the destruction of nuance.
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