80年代的媒体学

The book was written in the 1980s, so the most examples the author uses have become obsolete. Also fewer young people are watching TV nowadays, instead we just browse the Internet in search for anything. But its main idea is still relevant, that the sole pursuit of entertainment is damaging to the use of deductive logic, high concentration and serious attitudes, which are indispensable in intellectual activities. Without any of them it becomes impossible to discern contradiction in arguments or learn a subject with depth.

The television programs have substituted books as the main medium for public discourse in America. The inclination to entertainment has detrimental effects on all serious matters. It leads to superfluity when voters can no longer bear lengthy complicated political discussions, triviality when audience are used to dramatized and fragmented news programs, and dumbness when students expect learning to stay at the introductory phase and frown upon the use of exposition and the exercise of endurance…. But were people really smarter before modern technology became pervasive? Wisdom has always been scarce.