There will be no one who wants to read!

The following was inspired by Neil Postman's book,  Amusing Ourselves to Death (Penguin Books, 1985).

I asked someone about the several blogs that I am authoring. The response was that my blogs are too long. 

"People don't like to read. They want to see images. Keep the blog to a short paragraph. People today have a short attention span. Be satisfied with that or you will lose visitors to your sites." 

I respond, "But I can't share what needs to be said in one short paragraph." 

 "If you write it all out in great detail, your blog won't be read. It won't be shared. People don't like to read. You may think that what you are writing is important to write. Replace all of those words with an image. People like to see pictures. They don't want to be bothered with words, information and history." 

This is one of the points that our book makes. Our culture has changed and is changing. It has become a culture wherein reading in depth has been replaced by images, bits of entertainment, and 140 character statements.  Although pictures can certainly document that something happened, they most often don't provide any other information or explanation.  Bits of entertainment keep the public engaged because there is an insatiable appetite for reading secret information about the private and sometimes sordid details of the lives of celebrity. People clamor for that. Reading in depth has been replaced by entertainment.

With the availability of the internet and the cellphone, messaging, texting, twittering and the like have become the main thoroughfare of communication. It is easier to send a short text message than to make a phone call because then there is not a possibility of a protracted conversation. Texting is quick to do, to the point and immediate. Texting can be done at anytime practically - in a restaurant, while walking, while driving, while in the bathroom, in the classroom, during the hymns in church...really at almost anytime and anywhere. 

I was sitting at a family gathering where in the middle of a table conversation when one of the four at the table took his cellphone out and began checking his cellphone. He was entirely oblivious to the ongoing conversation or that he should be listening and participating. Receiving, reading and responding to messages have not only become an obligation, these activities have become acceptable and apparently not considered impolite. I may be a bit old fashioned here but isn't it simply polite to listen to what is going on during a conversation with anyone with whom we might be engaged? Isn't there some sort of taxonomy that governs the position that live, in person conversation must hold over the intrusion of a cellphone message? Isn't it important to stay focused on the people with whom you are having direct conversation by resisting the apparently irresistible temptation to respond to texts? 

I think about today's students in today's classrooms taught by today's teachers. It is common to observe students texting during lectures, surfing the internet during classes. These texts are likely not related in anyway to the content of the lecture but rather part of the constant stream of social networking that knows no proper boundary, place or time.  Even congressional representatives twitter during the presentation of important speeches such as the "State of the Union". So the immediacy of texting is not something owned by the youth of today. We all do it.  Reading in depth has been replaced by texting in 2-3 sentence bursts.

If you are still reading.... 

U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society makes the case that the general public cannot discern between "stuff that looks like art but isn't art" from art.  Why is that? Because most everything today is entertainment. Art, for the most part, is no longer in the public discourse.  Even the news media has turned its back on the art of delivering the news in depth. Watch any of the major news broadcasts. From the exciting opening musical theme, shocking stories that contain graphic images about the days most eye-catching events are the lead lines. Warning: The following contains graphic images that may be offensive to some viewers. Result: the viewers move closer to the television set and turn up the sound. The networks know this. Shock and awe and entertainment keep viewers riveted. They end a segment with a pitch for the next shock and awe story. "Yesterday, a woman in New York was found in a cellar after two years of captivity. More on this right after the break."  We don't dare turn the channel. After commercials that take the viewer to the most nutritious dog food available, the broadcast doesn't continue with the story about the woman in the cellar but with a different story.  The network didn't lie about reporting on the woman in the cellar because we are reminded by the anchor at the end of the next segment that the story about woman in the cellar is upcoming.  The networks keep the audience engaged by teasing viewers to stay with the network.  Near the very end of the 60 minute segment:  "And finally to the story about the woman in the New York cellar." Cut to image of the empty cellar and the woman being hauled away by ambulance, her faced blurred out to protect her identity."  And now to our News Quiz which is really trivial pursuit with the emphasis on "trivial".  

The talking heads begin the broadcast by guaranteeing that their network is ethical and therefore is presenting news that is not only critical for the public to know but also presented impartially.  To CNN's "Keeping Them Honest" where politicians are put to the test related to statements they have made or positions that yave taken. The viewing audience hopes that the politicians are tripped up by a delving interviewer. The cunning interviewer asks questions that no one dares to ask but questions everyone wishes were asked.  The viewers thank their lucky stars that they aren't the ones being interviewed but, with schaden freude, smile when the interviewer twists the knife into the belly of the caught and sometimes unsuspecting victim. What would be more artful and interesting would be to provide much more depth, evidence, and quantity of information from both sides of a controversial remark or topic.  But that would cease to embrace the entertainment factor. PBS,  BBC, and Meet the Press does a much better job of in depth reporting, but even they are being forced by the entertainment-news competition to move away from the art of broadcasting to the business of broadcasting.  

Watching a politician or business leader squirm, "live and on-air" is entertaining. Observing a well-prepared interviewer with an agenda verbally attack a well-known personality and then to observe the reporter win the debate is entertaining because there is catharsis in the victory achieved right in front of the public. We all witness it together and cheer the reporter on during the process. But "Keeping them Honest" doesn't really provide the victim interviewee with an hour to debate the real issues that underly the topic at hand.  

FOX News' "Fair and Balanced" essentially states unequivocally that, no matter what the news anchor and reporters say, the news FOX brings to the public can be trusted because the network, right up front, tells us that it is presenting the neutral and objective truth. Why would they say that unless its true? Besides, it is entertaining. 

All of the major news broadcasts resort to interviews of Hollywood actors who, for some reason, are asked to make recommendations about how to solve the situation in Sudan, for example.  But what background and education does a Hollywood actor really bring to the table. The public, for some reason, accepts what a famous actor says even if the actor doesn't know enough to be saying anything substantive. The U.S. government even assigns ambassador-like roles to celebrities. Why because famous people can be believed? They have been successful in achieving fame and have attained all of the financial rewards that pertain to being famous. Famous rich people must be credible! 

 CNN presents the Ridiculist as a follow to something tragic as if not to have the viewers dwell too long on death, dying and destruction in another country to which 99% of the U.S. population will never visit. MSNBC says, "Let's get back to entertainment".  Conservative talking heads accuse the President of using a teleprompter too much while they  themselves read off of a teleprompter. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC goes on and on daily about what is right and wrong very much like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity do daily on their radio tirades. The delivery of news in the guise of "Keeping them Honest," or "Fair and Balanced" is an oxymoron.  While there are major and critical stories to be reported, the networks spend significant amounts of time interviewing a comedian like Bill Maher. There is no doubt that Maher is very bright, brash and controversial. But really who cares what Bill Maher thinks. Maher is quick to make interesting observations.  He is famous, funny and challenging.  Maher is entertaining. He must say to himself, "I can't believe that MSNBC wants to interview me on the economy. What the hell do I know about that!" Even worse is the insipid banter between Bill O'Reilly and his celebrity guest Dennis Miller. 

You see the worry we have for the crisis in the United States. The problems we have in our culture are endemic and Huxley's Brave New World has arrived. As Neil Postman concludes in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: 

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.  Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy....In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

Thank you, Neil Postman, for pointing this out in 1985, one year after 1984 (Orwell), but sadly, Aldous Huxley was correct about his fears for the future in Brave New World. Few will take the time to read Huxley because as he predicted "there would be no one who wanted to read". It takes too much time. There are too many words. Even the news media folks will not be able to endure Postman's book because he took too many pages to describe the media's thinness and penchant for entertainment over news when he could have just done it with images and text messaging bursts.