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.
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