Book Cover - Book Review: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

The Age of Entertainment, and its intellectual consequences

This book was written in 1985, the year I was born, and unlike me, it hasn’t aged.

The Age of the Internet has now superseded the Age of Television, and the Age of Typography increasingly seems to be a thing of the past. People want to be entertained. Every. Single. Moment. As a result, we live in a world of triviality as anticipated by the author where too few people still know how to think deeply. We are flooded by “information” that is not actionable, and we end up being misinformed as the continual flow of information denies us understanding.

As with any old book, you may be tempted to skip this book. The world is changing so fast. It’s true. But the world is changing as depicted in the book. I really loved the reading to understand how we got there, especially the role of the telegraph and the news before the advent of the television. The book is well-argued. The author makes many good points that urge us to act. We have to prove the author wrong. I’m sure it would be the best gift we could give him.

About the author

Julien Sobczak works as a software developer for Scaleway, a French cloud provider. He is a passionate reader who likes to see the world differently to measure the extent of his ignorance. His main areas of interest are productivity (doing less and better), human potential, and everything that contributes in being a better person (including a better dad and a better developer).

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