The Constitution Will Not Be Televised

""I hope to persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute."
-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman argued persuasively that the content of our discourse depends on the means of communication. For example, he pointed out, smoke signals cannot be used to send complicated messages. Postman, a deep thinker and talented writer, believed that the written word as a communications medium permits careful, rational thought. Television, in contrast, only has room for thinking that is shallow and superficial. "