In Amusing Ourselves to Death chapter four, Postman talks about how Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas used to have incredibly long debates between one another. He states that the audience watching was very attentive and took part in clapping for things they agreed on. He says that so he can compare today's attention span to theirs. Though, I have trouble hearing that today's attention span is incredibly short. I do, see, and hear things that need my full attention and know others that do as well. Marching band, we need to put all our focus into where to breath, what to play, how to play it, where to march, and where to stop. Postman believes that the majority of the world has that dumb, goldfish attention span but I'd like to say at least half, we are not all mindless freaks that need to be entertained every five seconds.
Marching band isn't even the end of it, a lot of people that I know would love to sit at a symphonic band's concert and listen to the music. And out in the world there are people who sit at the Obama speeches and want to hear what he has to say because it's important to them.
The television is not something that is commonly important to someone, therefore someone will not give it their full attention. Though if it's something they love, something they have a passion for of course it's going to have their full attention and that could last for hours on end. Postman believes we have a short attention span but he's only comparing that to television programs, he's not looking farther into it where he should.
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ReplyDeletePostman was not really pointing out that our generation has a generally short attention span, rather he was referring to our ability to process words and speech. The people of the Lincoln-Douglas generation were accustomed to analyzing and processing spoken word. In short, they have much higher comprehension than our generation.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you are in a situation of your own interest and passion then it'd be much easier to direct focus. The popular interest of that day were debates and speeches since they were what people looked forward to for leisure. Music and other things were not as widely available as now.
I totally agree with you that America has a short attention span only on the things that they are not passionate about, but Postman is also comparing the Lincoln-Douglas speeches to entertainment such as television, not other things in life. What he is saying is that if we are not amused every five seconds on television it is as easy as a push of button on the remote to change the channel. Referring to life in gerenal, if we are not interested in a particular thing such as school of course we are not going to be as attentive as playing a favorite sport or some other kind of activity that we love to do because we will always choose what is amusing to us.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think it is fair that Postman compares the relationship between those people and the debates with the relationship of us and our television. The people attended those debates because they were deeply interested in what they had to say, and physically made an effort to get up and go there. Therefore, they payed attention because they cared and because it would be a waste of time to go if they didn't pay attention. However, when we watch television, we don't physically make an effort to get up and go somewhere. For that reason, it isn't a waste of effort to not pay as much attention.
ReplyDeleteMario Ayala