Peek-a-Boo World: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Chapter 5

Intro Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 {pt 1} Ch. 4 {pt 2} Ch. 5 Ch. 6 Ch. 7 
Ch. 8 Ch. 9 {pt 1} Ch. 9 {pt 2} Ch. 10 Ch. 11

Part 1: Chapter 5 The Peek-a-Boo World

This chapter deals with two inventions that attacked typography: the telegraph and the photograph. They took us from the Age of Exposition to the Age of Show Business. Postman uses the word "assaulted" purposefully as I'll try to explain a little bit later. These inventions advanced the world by making it in a sense smaller, more connected, and are seen as more positive than negative by most.

There was a conqueror mindset of people in the 1800s. This can be seen in the expansion of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean during the early and mid 1800s. The Wild West was the 'final frontier'; there was nothing left to conquer. Or wasn't there? Around this time the idea that "transportation and communication could be disengaged" took root. News traveled as fast -or slow- as a Pony Express man or a steam locomotive. The invention of electricity bred the telegraph which changed how quickly news traveled. It also changed what was considered news. Through this telegraph changed public discourse.

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate...We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough." Henry David Thoreau, quoted page 65

The attack of the telegraph came in the form of irrelevance, impotence and incoherence. Information became a commodity; buyable and sellable. Previously information received was for "social and political decision-making and action." No longer was the news comprised of "human-interest stories" that were of timeless quality. The telegraph was about how fast and how far the news, whatever it was, could be sent. It took one day for the press to utilize the telegraph for its own purposes. 

With the speed and distance the telegraph could cover, the quality of information transmitted lessened. "James Bennett of the New York Herald boasted that in the first week of 1848, his paper contained 79,000 words of telegraphic content -of what relevance to his readers, he didn't say. (pg 67)" I found it interesting that the Associated Press -suppliers of "news from nowhere, addressed to no one in particular"- took four years to form. "The news of the day" was made up of what we see today in our own news: wars, crimes, crashes, murders, floods, etc. Postman equates this socially and politically to "Princess Adelaide's whooping cough." Or in other words, it really didn't matter. 

Postman devotes two pages (pp 68-69) in this chapter on telegraphy's impact on the 'information-action ratio'. News that causes us to alter our plans has a high 'information-action ratio'. Some examples: stock market news, weather reports, and possibly a local crime. Here are some questions that will help to see if the news we hear or read have a high 'information-action ratio' (and not in the sense that in a few years so-and-so can be voted out of office!): 

• What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East?
• Or to lower the rates of inflation, crime or unemployment? 
• What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war?
• What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, etc.? {Remember this was written in 1985- put any current affair in place of those mentioned.}

Postman answers these for us: we plan to do nothing. It's not that we don't want to do something, but really these are out of our scope of influence!

The relevance of information no longer mattered with the telegraph's speedy transmissions. The news no longer had an impact socially or politically in people's lives. And finally, the speed with which news could be transmitted meant that the words used had to be cut short. No more meaningful titles with insight to the information. That was replaced with 'headlines' intended to grab your attention, not to be understood or analyzed. The telegraph made public discourse essentially incoherent. 

Postman also talks about with the 'global village' created through the speed of transmitting information. People were now privy to insignificant information about each other. Just "the most superficial facts." Another negative of the telegraph was that it had no way to actually store the information to be analyzed or discussed. It essentially burned the information as soon as it delivered it, to be replaced by the next headline. It enabled people to know of, not about, a lot of things. It changed how knowledge was measured.

I think of Facebook and Twitter today, with their limited characters allowed in status updates. We are able to post a few quick sentences, just enough to get someone's attention. Sensational. Fragmented. Impersonal. Welcome to the Age of Electronics. 

One thing I will defend in these newer forms, as could possibly be argued to Postman as well for the telegraph, is the accessibility of information does get people discussing and this can lead to action. They may not have known about an event or concept without it being first brought to them via telegraph -or Facebook today. Postman argued that the telegraph "answered questions we didn't ask, and did not permit a reply." While this is true of the telegraph is it true of social media? I can see both sides of this. 

The other invention came to us from the talents of Louis Daguerre, William Henry Talbot, and Sir John F. W. Herschel. Photography is often referred to as a 'language' but Postman rather objects to this saying that "writing and photography do not inhabit the same universe of discourse. (pg 71)" I really enjoyed Postman's breaking down the 'language' of photography on page 72. Basically, photographs deal with particulars whereas language deals with ideas. A photograph cannot show "The" of anything; it cannot represent as a whole, only one particular instance of something. Gavriel Salomon is quoted: "Pictures need to be recognized, words need to be understood. (pg 72)" You can't take a photograph out of context because it doesn't have to have a context. Much like telegraphy's disconnected news stories, photographs presents the world as a series of idiosyncratic events. Photographs need not have a beginning, middle or end; they need not be placed at a certain point in history. "There is only a present and it need not be part of any story that can be told. (pg 74)"

Here is where the word 'assault' comes into Postman's argument. He references Daniel Boorstin's book The Image: 

"I chose the word "assault" deliberately here, to amplify the point implied in Boorstin's "graphic revolution. The new imagery, with photography at its forefront, did not merely function as a supplement to language, but bid to replace it as our dominant means for construing, understanding, and testing reality. (pg 74)" 

Photographs are wonderful that they depict nature and events. Postman wasn't disregarding their usefulness but when it comes to language and discourse, he definitely felt their inclusion was detrimental rather than good. It wasn't long before the photograph was included into the press. I'll share a portion of the chapter here to illustrate the increase of irrelevant information through photography:

"You may get a better sense of what I mean here if you imagine a stranger's informing you that the illyx is a subspecies of vermiform plant with articulated leaves that flowers biannually on the island of Aldononjes. And if you wonder aloud, 'Yes, but what has that to do with anything?' imagine that your informant replies, 'But here is a photograph I want you to see,' and hands you a picture labeled Illyx on Aldononjes. 'Ah, yes,' you might murmur, 'now I see.' It is true enough that the photograph provides a context for the sentence you have been given, and that the sentence provides a context of sorts for the photograph, and you may even believe for a day or so that you have learned something...At best you are left with an amusing bit of trivia, good for trading in cocktail party chatter or solving a crossword puzzle, but nothing more. (pg 75)"

Put the photograph together with the telegraph's broken news, and you've got visual gibberish! Well, not exactly but it is sometimes close. Just think of the cheap tabloids like The Enquirer, where you can read about an alien baby born on Earth to a famous celebrity- and there probably are lots of photos! But that's really just entertainment -to most of us. The very problem though is that what is considered news lately is entertainment. Dare I direct you to the Miley Cyrus performance recently? Entertainment in and of itself isn't bad but when we choose to live there, then it is. That's where television comes in, according to Postman. We'd been given a glimpse of the 'peek-a-boo' world -snatches of irrelevant, incoherent, impersonal information and images- with telegraphy and photography, but television made it our reality. 

Because television was to Postman what I think electronics and internet is to us today, I will compare the remainder of this chapter to our media. Electronics -computers, video games, iPhones, tablets, iPads, laptops, bluetooth, Skype, instant messaging, etc- have advanced all that Postman disliked about television, because it breaks down the discourse even further. Electronics is not a respecter of persons; it doesn't care how poor or rich, how educated or illiterate, how young or old the audience. It wants everyone, and everyone has access to it. And it's gone beyond the telegraph and photograph, the fragmented information, but included things that have no business being aired. Everything is everyone's business with electronics. And it's all news.

"Television is the command center in subtler ways...[it] arranges our communications environment for us in ways that no other medium has the power to do. (pg 78)" I would strike television and substitute electronics. Postman goes on to say of television what I apply to electronics: "[It is] an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well. (pg 79)"

The worst of all of this is not that the information has become irrelevant, impotent and impersonal but that we see nothing strange about that fact. It is what it is for us. We come to expect it to be bright, flashy and quick. Sometimes it is expected to be raunchy and disgusting. And that's news/entertainment. 

I will end with another excerpt from Postman because he says it so well:

"There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed...And if some of our institutions seem not to fit the template of the times, why it is they, and not the template, that seem to us disordered and strange. (pg 80)"

I will add a note that I've started reading Huxley's Brave New World. Just barely. 

Next up, chapter 6, The Age of Show Business.