Yes, We're Finally Done.

In the last paragraph of chapter 11, Neil Postman writes, " For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking."  Postman's message in this is that people are watching television and following the media.  But while doing this, our society has simply stopped thinking.  We are being so entertained that when we watch television and laugh or find something entertaining, we don't even know why we think it's funny or why we are so entertained by it.

I never want to be silent ever again. Ever.

Friday. Had two days off that week for snowdays and it was almost the weekend, but I was still dreading it Thursday night.  I knew the next morning I would have to wake up and the moment I walked into school, I had to be completely silent all day long. To be honest, it was awful. I couldn't get any point across in any class. One unusual experience I had was that there were only three people in my whole entire Spanish class that were able to talk. Everyone else, including me, were silent. Mrs. Remy was trying to talk to us and get understand us, but it was impossible. We ended up taking notes silently from the over-head. It was an awful experience to not be able to talk all day and I did try really hard.  Even though i put in a lot of effort to stay quiet, there were multiple times that I slipped up and talked. This task and experience was really hard, but after it was all over, it made me really think.  There was no way, in our society, that we could get our points across that way. Talking has helped us develop thoughts and without it, our culture would be very different. It was a good experience after, but while it was happening, it was like torture.

Dr. Postman Speech & Book Parallels

       The whole purpose of Dr. Postman's speech at Calvin college and the theme throughout the book is that we, as a society, are starting to head towards a time when we almost completely rely on media and entertainment. While I was scanning back over the first chapter to connect some of the ideas brought up from the speech, there was an example that did not directly state the same thing, but had the same meaning behind it.  Dr. Postman talks about in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death that time has become something of greater importance to people over time.  Before the clock was made, people had no sense of time. They did not pay much attention to it. The invention of the clock brought people to a new age where everything was timed and every second counted. Therefore, overall, the clock developed something new in society. Just as time shed a new light on society, so did the cloning of sheep, frogs, and monkeys. This was, just like the clock, a start-up to a more technological and scientific world. They both changed a huge aspect of society.
       Another similarity that I found between the book and Dr. Postman's speech was that he uses the phrase "we  will become pets to our computers."  In the book, he says that we are literally amusing ourselves to death. We don't care about how technology is taking us over, we just want to be entertained by it. Both of these statements make the same conclusion:  We will, sooner or later, become so obsessed with media, entertainment, and technology that we will essentially let them take over our lives and control us. Dr. Postman had the same points and meanings in both his book and his speech. His opinion of society and how we communicate will never change.