Amusing Ourselves to Death

Attention: Based on past no shows, everyone will start on a waiting list by default. Once you confirm (in a comment or by PMing me) that you’ve actually read the book, I’ll move you to the “going” list. Thanks for understanding!

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Written in the age of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death feels even more urgent now, when Instagram, TikTok, and endless feeds turn news into spectacle and conversation into content. We’ll look at what Postman got right, what he couldn’t have foreseen, and how his ideas map onto today’s attention economy.

The question is the same: when everything is packaged as entertainment, what happens to our attention, our public talk, and our sense of what’s real?