Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media–from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs– it’s more relevant than ever.

Despite being published in the 80s, this was a great read.

The Internet is the “new” technology that’s accelerated us on a path we’ve been put on by TV initially, many years ago, and ever since then, the way public discourse happens has changed drastically, and not for the better.

The people who get elected today aren’t well spoken orators who can reason about the tough societal issues we’re faced with, they’re Twitter trolls.

This didn’t just happen over night and for no good reason. Neil Postman believes that TV (and if he was alive, he would be pointing the finger at the big tech companies I’m sure) is in part to blame for this and through his words he convinced me of this as well.

TV and the Internet are here to stay. The question is: what can we do to stop it from helping bad faith actors from getting and retaining power and ruining things for the rest of us?