by Neil Postman
Chapter 3: Typographic America
1 Franklin, p. 175.
2 Hart, p. 8.
3 Hart, p. 8.
4 Hart, p. 8.
5 Hart, p. 15.
6 Lockridge, p. 184.
7 Lockridge, p. 184.
8 Hart, p. 47.
9 Mumford, p. 136.
10 Stone, p. 42.
11 Hart, p. 31.
12 Boorstin, p. 315.
13 Boorstin, p. 315.
14 Hart, p. 39.
15 Hart, p. 45.
16 Fast, p. x (in Introduction).
17 This press was not the first established on the American continent. The Spanish had established a printing office in Mexico a hundred years earlier.
18 Mott, p. 7.
19 Boorstin, p. 320.
20 Mott, p. 9.
21 Lee, p. 10.
22 Boorstin, p. 326.
23 Boorstin, p. 327.
24 Hart, p. 27.
25 Tocqueville, p. 58.
26 Tocqueville, pp. 5-6.
27 Hart, p. 86.
28 Curti, pp. 353-354.
29 Hart, p. 153.
30 Hart, p. 74.
31 Curti, p. 337.
32 Hart, p. 102.
33 Berger, p. 183.
34 Curti, p. 356.
35 Berger, p. 158.
36 Berger, p. 158.
37 Berger, p. 158.
38 Curti, p. 356.
39 Twain, p. 161.
40 Hofstadter, p. 145.
41 Hofstadter, p. 19.
42 Tocqueville, p. 260.
43 Miller, p. 269.
44 Miller, p. 271.
45 Marx, p. 150.
Chapter 4: The Typographic Mind
1 Sparks, p. 4.
2 Sparks, p. 11.
3 Sparks, p. 87.
4 Questions were continuously raised about the accuracy of the transcriptions of these debates, Robert Hitt was the verbatim reporter for the debates, and he was accused of repairing Lincoln’s “illiteracies.” The accusations were made, of course, by Lincoln’s political enemies, who, perhaps, were dismayed by the impression Lincoln’s performances were making on the country. Hitt emphatically denied he had “doctored” any of Lincoln’s speeches.
5 Hudson, p. 5.
6 Sparks, p. 86.
7 Mill, p. 64.
8 Hudson, p. 110.
9 Paine, p. 6.
10 Hudson, p. 132.
11 Perry Miller, p. 15.
12 Hudson, p. 65.
13 Hudson, p. 143.
14 Perry Miller, p. 119.
15 Perry Miller, p. 140.
16 Perry Miller, pp. 140-141.
17 Perry Miller, p. 120.
18 Perry Miller, p. 153.
19 Presbrey, p. 244.
20 Presbrey, p. 126.
21 Presbrey, p. 157.
22 Presbrey, p. 235.
23 Anderson, p. 17. In this connection, it is worth citing a letter, dated January 15, 1787, written by Thomas Jefferson to Monsieur de Crève-coeur. In his letter, Jefferson complained that the English were trying to claim credit for an American invention: making the circumference of a wheel out of one single piece of wood. Jefferson speculated that Jersey farmers learned how to do this from their reading of Homer, who described the process clearly. The English must have copied the procedure from Americans, Jefferson wrote, “because ours are the only farmers who can read Homer.”
Chapter 5: The Peek-a-Boo World
1 Thoreau, p. 36.
2 Harlow, p. 100.
3 Czitrom, pp. 15-16.
4 Sontag, p. 165:
5 Newhall, p. 33.
6 Salomon, p. 36.
7 Sontag, p. 20.
8 Sontag, p. 20.
Chapter 6: The Age of Show Business
1 On July 20, 1984, The New York Times reported that the Chinese National Television network had contracted with CBS to broadcast sixty-four hours of CBS programming in China. Contracts with NBC and ABC are sure to follow. One hopes that the Chinese understand that such transactions are of great political consequence. The Gang of Four is as nothing compared with the Gang of Three.
2 This story was carried by several newspapers, including the Wisconsin State Journal, February 24, 1983, Section 4, p. 2.
3 As quoted in The New York Times, June 7, 1984, Section A, p. 20.
Chapter 7: “Now... This”
1 For a fairly thorough report on Ms. Craft’s suit, see The New York Times, July 29, 1983.
2 MacNeil, p. 2.
3 MacNeil, p. 4.
4 See Time, July 9, 1984, p. 69.
Chapter 8: Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
1 Graham, pp. 5-8. For a detailed analysis of Graham’s style, see Michael Real’s Mass Mediated Culture. For an amusing and vitriolic one, see Roland Barthes’ “Billy Graham at the Winter Cyclodome,” in The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. Barthes says, “If God really does speak through the mouth of Dr. Graham, then God is a real blockhead.”
2 As quoted in “Religion in Broadcasting,” by Robert Abelman and Kimberly Neuendorf, p. 2. This study was funded by a grant from Unda-USA, Washington, D.C.
3 Armstrong, p. 137.
4 Arendt, p. 352.
Chapter 9: Reach Out and Elect Someone
1 Drew, p. 263.
2 Moran, p. 122.
3 Rosen, p. 162.
4 Quoted from a speech given on March, 27, 1984, at the Jewish Museum in New York City on the occasion of a conference of the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting.
5 Moran, p. 125.
6 From a speech given at the twenty-fourth Media Ecology Conference, April 26, 1982, in Saugerties, New York. For a full account of Dean Gerbner’s views, see “Television: The New State Religion,” Et cetera 34:2 (June, 1977): 145-150.
Chapter 10: Teaching as an Amusing Activity
1 Dewey, p. 48.
2 G. Comstock, S. Chaffee, N. Katzman, M. McCombs, and D. Roberts, Television and Human Behavior (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
3 A. Cohen and G. Salomon, “Children’s Literate Television Viewing : Surprises and Possible Explanations,” Journal of Communication 29 (1979): 156-163; L. M. Meringoff, “What Pictures Can and Can’t Do for Children’s Story Comprehension,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, April, 1982; J. Jacoby, W. D. Hoyer and D. A. Sheluga, Miscomprehension of Televised Communications (New York: The Educational Foundation of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, 1980); J. Stauffer, R. Frost and W. Rybolt, “Recall and Learning from Broadcast News: Is Print Better?,” Journal of Broadcasting (Summer, 1981): 253-262; A. Stem, “A Study for the National Association for Broadcasting,” in M. Barret (ed.), The Politics of Broadcasting, 1971-1972 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973); C. E. Wilson, “The Effect of a Medium on Loss of Information,” Journalism Quarterly 51 (Spring, 1974): 111-115; W. R. Neuman, “Patterns of Recall Among Television News Viewers,” Public Opinion Quarterly 40 (1976): 118-125; E. Katz, H. Adoni and P. Parness, “Remembering the News: What the Pictures Add to Recall,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (1977): 233-242; B. Gunter, “Remembering Television News: Effects of Picture Content,” Journal of General Psychology 102 (1980): 127-133.
4 Salomon, p. 81.
Bibliography
Anderson, Paul. Platonism in the Midwest. Philadelphia: Temple University Publications, 1963.
Arendt, Hannah. “Society and Culture,” in The Human Dialogue, edited by Floyd Matson and Ashley Montagu. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1967.
Armstrong, Ben. The Electric Church. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979.
Berger, Max. The British Traveler in America, 1836-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York: Vintage Books, 1958.
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1956.
Curti, Merle. The Growth of American Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.
Czitrom, Daniel. Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. The Kappa Delta Pi Lectures. London: Collier Books, 1963.
Drew, Elizabeth. Portrait of an Election: The 1980 Presidential Campaign. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Fast, Howard. Introduction to Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine. New York: Heritage Press, 1961.
Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Magnum Books, 1968.
Frye, Northrop. The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Toronto: Academic Press, 1981.
Graham, Billy. “The Future of TV Evangelism.” TV Guide 31:10 (1983).
Harlow, Alvin Fay. Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Telephone and Wireless. New York: Appleton-Century, 1936.
Hart, James D. The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.
Hudson, Winthrop. Religion in America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965.
Lee, James Melvin. History of American Journalism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917.
Lockridge, Kenneth. “Literacy in Early America, 1650-1800,” in Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader, edited by Harvey J. Graff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
MacNeil, Robert. “Is Television Shortening Our Attention Span?” New York University Education Quarterly 14:2 (Winter, 1983).
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Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography and Other Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969.
Miller, John C. The First Frontier: Life in Colonial America. New York: Dell, 1966.
Miller, Perry. The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965.
Moran, Terence. “Politics 1984: That’s Entertainment.” Et cetera 41:2 (Summer, 1984).
Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the U.S. through 260 Years, 1690 to 1950. New York: Macmillan, 1950.
Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1934.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modem Art, 1964.
Ong, Walter. “Literacy and the Future of Print.” Journal of Communication 30:1 (Winter, 1980).
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Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason. New York: Peter Eckler Publishing Co., 1919.
Presbrey, Frank. The History and Development of Advertising. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929.
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Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
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Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Riverside Editions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
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Twain, Mark. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York: Harper and Bros., 1959.
Index
ABC network movie The Day After, and post-show discussion
advertising: newspaper, history of ; political; television commercials
Agassiz, Louis
Age of Reason
Age of Reason, The (Paine)
American Mercury
American Spelling Book (Webster)
Analects (Confucius)
Anderson, Paul
Arendt, Hannah
Areopagitica (Milton)
Aristotle
Associated Press
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Franklin)
auto industry
Bakker, Jim
Baltimore Patriot
Baptists
Barthes, Roland
Bay Psalm Book
Beecher, Henry Ward
Bennett, James
Bible
“Bonanza” (TV show)
book censorship
Boorstin, Daniel; The Image
Boston
Boston Gazette
Boston News-Letter.
Brave New World (Huxley)
British Broadcasting Corporation
Brokaw, Tom
Bruner, Jerome
Buckley, William
Bunn, Alfred
Burns, George
capitalism
Carlyle, Thomas
Carter, Jimmy
Cassirer, Ernst
Catholicism
Cavett, Dick
CBS network
censorship
“Cheers” (TV show)
Chicago
Children’s Television Workshop
Cicero
cities, as metaphors of national character
Clark, Ramsey
clocks
college: commencements, televised ; 19th-century
Colonial America, typography in
Commager, Henry Steele
commercials. See television commercials
Common Sense (Paine)
computers
confessionals, televised
Confucius, Analects
Congregationalists
Constitution, U.S.
conversation
“Cosmos” (TV series)
Coswell, Henry
court trials, televised
Craft, Christine
Cronkite, Walter
crossword puzzles
Daguerre, Louis
daguerreotype
Daily News
“Dallas” (TV show)
Day After, The (ABC movie), and post-show discussion
debates: Lincoln-Douglas
; 1984 presidential
Decalogue
Deism
Democracy in America (Tocqueville)
Department of Education
Description of New England (Smith)
Dewey John; Experience and Education
Dickens, Charles
Dickinson, Emily
Dietrich, Dr. Edward
“Diff’rent Strokes” (TV show)
Dirksen, Everett
doctoral oral
Douglas, Stephen A.
Dryden, John, Fables
Duché, Jacob
Dukakis, Mike
Dunkers
Dwight, Timothy
“Dynasty” (TV show)
education: Colonial; to control television; 19th-century ; as television entertainment; “The Voyage of the Mimi” programs, discussed
Edwards, Jonathan; Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northhampton; A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
18th-century religion and typography
Einstein, Albert
elderly, and television
“The Electric Company” (TV show)
electricity
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Empire of Reason
England
entertainment; education as ; modem cities as; politics as; television as
“Entertainment Tonight” (TV show)
Episcopalians
epistemology, media as
Ervin, Sam
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke)
Experience and Education (Dewey)
eyeglasses, invention of
“Eye-
Witness News” (TV show)
Fables (Dryden)
Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northhampton (Edwards)
Falwell, Jerry
Faulkner, William
Federal Communications Act
Federalist Papers (Publius)
film
Finney, Charles
“Firing Line” (TV show)
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Ford, Gerald
Ford, Henry
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (Mander)
Franklin, Benjamin
Franklin, James
Frelinghuysen, Theodore
Freud, Sigmund
Frye, Nonhrop
Galileo
Gerbner, George
German Ideology, The (Marx)
Goodrich, Samuel
Goody, Jack
Graham, Billy
Great Awakening
Greece, Classical; book censorship in; rhetoric in
Greeley, Horace
Guardian (Steele)
“Gunsmoke” (TV show)
Hamilton, Alexander
Harris, Benjamin
Harvard University
Havelock, Eric
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hemingway, Ernest
Henry VIII, King of England
Herschel, John F. W.
Heyman, John
History and Development of Advertising, The (Presbrey)
Hoffman, David
Hofstadter, Richard
Holbrook, Josiah
Homer (Pope)
Horn, Steve
Huxley, Aldous ; Brave New World
illuminated manuscripts
Image, The (Boorstin)
Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Iranian hostage crisis
Jackson, Jesse
Japan
Javits, Jacob
Jay, John
Jaynes, Julian
Jefferson, Thomas
Jews
Johnston, J. R W.
Kennedy, Edward
Kennedy, John F.
Kent, James
Kissinger, Henry
Koch, Edward
“Kojak” (TV show)
Koppel, Ted
Las Vegas
“Laugh-In” (TV show)
lecture hallsh-century