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Postman Quiz Objectives

 

 

 

EXAM 1

CHAPTER 1 AND 2  POSTMAN

  1. What is the central thesis of Amusing Ourselves To Death?

  2. Postman uses the second commandment of the Decalogue as "beef" to support which of his key assumptions?  

  3. If we are in fact amusing ourselves to death, what is dying?

  4. What does he mean by "the clock introduces a new form of conversation between God and man, which God appears to be the loser"?

  5. What is meant when he said "the media creates a second-hand reality?"

  6. What does it mean to say that the “medium is the metaphor?”

  7. What are the biases of the televisual medium?

  8. What does it mean to say that “media are our metaphors, and metaphors create the content of our culture?”

  9. What is the task of the social critic?

  10. Why does Postman raise no objection to “junk” entertainment on television?

  11. If one is to talk seriously about television, why must one therefore talk of epistemology?

  12. Why were proverbs and parables important in an oral culture? (18-19)

  13. Why does Postman believe that television “pollutes” public discourse?

  14. What does it mean to say that media change is ecological?

  15. Why does Postman argue that a 300 pound person like our twenty-seventh President would not likely be put  forth as a contemporary presidential candidate?  (7)

  16. What does Postman mean when he says that the “news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination.?  (8)

  17. Which of Postman’s fundamental argues does the Kennedy-Nixon television debates dramatize?

  18. When does Postman think that television is at its most dangerous?  (17)

  19. What does Hamlet, Alice in Wonderland, Greece, and Israel all have in common? (17)

  20. What does  Postman mean when he says, "Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created." (11)

  21. Why do stories such as the Columbia and Challenger space disasters, the Michael Jackson trial, and the 9/11 tragedy make such compelling television? (lecture/discussion)

  22. What does Bertrand Russell mean by “immunity to eloquence.” (25-26)

  23. What does it mean to say that television helped to erode serious and rational public conversation? (43)

  24. How is vision of George Orwell in 1984 similar to and different from  the vision of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. (vii-viii)

  25. If someone was running for public office why might a political communication consultant recommend that a candidate lose weight, adapt a particular mode of dress, or perhaps undergo Botox treatments?  (4)

  26. What is Postman’s fundamental goal in writing Amusing Ourselves to Death? (6)

CHAPTER 3 AND 4 POSTMAN

  1. What factor(s) accounted, for the fact that 19th century America was dominated by the printed word and an oratory based on the printed word?
  2. What were the characteristics of public discourse in the Age of Print?
  3. What are some of the ways in which the emergence of typography in the 15th-16th centuries altered cultures which relied solely on oral discourse?
  4. Why does Postman think the “Dunkers” were significant?
  5. Why dies domination of print in a culture t tend to encourage "rationality"?
  6. What cognitive or intellectual capacities or skills are required of print which may not be required of a visual medium of communication such as film or television?
  7. Why might have been one o f reasons that elementary schools were often called grammar schools in colonial America?
  8. What does mendacity mean? (36)
  9. What does it mean to say that the form in which ideas are expressed affect what those ideas will be? (31)
  10. What are the primary reasons that the medium of print resonated in typographic America?
  11. In his book Democracy in America Alexander Tocqueville wrote “an American cannot  converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation, he speaks to you as if he is addressing a meeting.”  Postman uses the Tocqueville quote as evidence for what claim. (42)
  12. What does it mean to say that a sentence has propositional content?
  13. Why did Americans place such an emphasis on literacy in colonial America?
  14. From Postman’s perspective, to understand a culture’s history what it is most important to pay attention to?
  15. What does it really mean to say that the “medium is the message?”
  16. We have discussed five pivotal terms in the study of communication. It was suggested that to talk intelligently about communication one much understand the interrelationship between these four classes of variable.
  17. Which class of  variables would Postman have felt was most  important?
  18. Why does Postman believe that the ways in which television influences how we come to understand our world is largely invisible.

EXAM 2

     CHAPTER 5 AND 6 POSTMAN

  1. From a Postmaniac perspective, why would email be a poor choice for a marriage proposal?
  2.  What is context-free information? (65)
  3. Postman uses  Samuel Coleridge’s one-liner “water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to  drink” to support what idea? (67)
  4. According to Postman, In both oral and typographic cultures, from where does information tend to derive its importance?
  5. How does the context of news in the Age of Television differ from the context of news in the Age of Print? (69)
  6. How does the Internet differ from the telegraph? (69)
  7. What does Postman mean when he says the telegraphy demands that we burn its contents?  (70)
  8. How is the telegraph similar to CNN Headline News? (70)
  9. In the Age of Print, what did it mean to know and understand? (70)
  10. What does it mean to say that the telegraph created a neighborhood of strangers? (70)
  11. What is the relationship between the photograph and the printing press? (71)    
  12. Under what conditions can the photography of visual image present to us an idea or cconcept about the world? (72)     
  13. What does Gavriel Soloman,  Professor of Educational Psychology, at the University of Haifa, argue? (72)
  14. What does syntax mean?  (72)
  15.  How does Postman compare images and language? (73)
  16. What  is the relationship between image and context? (73)
  17. What is rear view mirror thinking? (83-84)
  18. According to Postman why can the news not be considered a serious form of public discourse? (73)
  19. Why must television news eschew serious discourse in favor of entertainment?  (88)
  20. What does the medium of television seek from its audience (91)
  21. According to the Postman, what is the single most important fact about television? (93
  22. According to Postman, why does television resonate so powerfully though-out the culture? (92)
  23. What are some of the difference between the form of a contemporary political debate and the form of the Lincoln-Douglas debates? (97)

CHAPTER 7 AND 8

  1. In his first and likely last appearance on Crossfire, what was John Stewarts fundamental argument?
  2. Message designers must follow where the medium leads.  Where does the medium lead a producer of the evening news? (100)
  3. According to Postman, why can the news on television not be taken seriously?
  4.  What is Robert MacNeil position on the nature of commercial television news? (105-06)
  5. What are the potential perils when a significant percentage of people still rely on ttelevision as their only source of news and information?
  6. From Postman’s vantage point what is disinformation? (107-108)
  7. What are the potential consequences of disinformation? (107-108)
  8. What are some of most serious consequence of living in information environment heavily influenced by the epistemology of television? (106)
  9. Why is detecting contradiction difficult when the news embraces a “now this” worldview? (108)
  10. From a typographic world view what is one of the keys to detecting trust? (108)
  11.  What does Postman mean when he states that “Big Brother has turned out to be Howdy Doody.” (111) 
  12.  What does ecumenism mean?  (115)  
  13. When is television at its best? (116)
  14.  When is television at its best? (116)
  15. What was the major conclusion Postman draws from watching 42 hours of tele-evangelical programming?
  16. What does it mean to say that mediums may alter message meaning, texture and value? (117)
  17. Why can’t a condolence card  have the same meaning as a face-to-face encounter?
  18. What does it mean to say that discourse can not be converted from one medium to  another?
  19. What is required to have an authentic religious experience? (117)
  20. How could Postman likely respond to the argument by Pat Robertson? (118)
  21. Can a gym, dining hall or hotel room be transformed into a place of worship?(119)
  22. What is a consecrated space? (117)
  23. Why it is very difficult to have a religious experience in one’s living room watching  television? (119)
  24. What are the biases of the television medium? (119)
  25. What does juxtaposition mean?
  26. In religious discourse what is juxtaposed with introspection and spiritual transcendence?  (120)

  27. According to Postman what entertainment form is commonly used in religiousus programming? (120)

  28. What do programs such as Survivor and religious programming have in common?  121)

  29. When is television particularly effective? (121)

  30. When is television most alluring? (121)

  31. How does Postman characterize experiencing religion in you living room? (121)

  32. What is  the purpose of spectacle? (122)

  33. What is enchantment? (122)

  34. What is the strength of television in the context of religious discourse (123)

  35. What does blasphemy mean?

 EXAM 3

   CHAPTER 9, 10, and 11 

 

            1.  What are the potential perils of televisual religion?
            2.  In the Age of Television what is the goal of political discourse? (126)
            3.  What are the perils of advertising political candidates like products (126?
            4.  How has advertising deviated from its historical origins? (127)
            5.  What is a proposition?
            6. Why are commercials less likely to make rational claims? (127)7.
            7.  Why is linguistic discourse now generally an obsolete as a basis for helping consumers make product decisions? (127)
            8.  The commercial relies primarily on what type of influence?
            9.  What does it mean to say that you can not debate the relative truth or falsity of a commercial?
            10.  What is psycho-drama? (127)
            11.  Why does Postman compare the process of marketing and advertising products to the  process of psycho-therapy? (128) 
            12.  Postman references Orwell’s “Politics of the English Language” in order to help make what argument?

            13.  Why it is difficult to evaluate the relative truth or falsity of claims make in a commercial? (130)

            14.  What does didactic mean? (131)

            15.  What can account for the fact that the television commercial has become the primary means of presenting political ideas?
                    (129-130)

            16.  What might people learn collaterally from watching television commercials? (131)

            17.  What are the biases of the television medium? (131)

            18.  With the rise of television what factors are exerting more significant influence on the political process? (134)

            19.  What accounts for the power of the television commercial? (134)

            20.  From a political campaign communication consultants perspectives what strategies are likely to work most effectively in a
                  political commercial? (134)

            21.  How are the product commercial and the political commercial similar?

            22.  What metaphor does Postman use to describe the function of the product and political commercial? (135)

            23.  What does it mean to say that the political commercial is ahistorical? (136)

            24.  What skills might be eroded as a result of living in a culture characterized by ubiquitous and pervasive media? (137)

            25.  What is the greatest threat to democratic values and the free flow of information when living in a culture characterized by
                    ubiquitous and pervasive media? (140)

            26.  How does television influence a person’s readiness to read? (141)

            27.  According to Postman was has been the greatest potential peril of “educational  programs”  such as Sesame Street? (144)

            28. What is collateral learning?  (144)

            29. Why does Postman argue that television constitutes a curriculum?  (145)

            30. According to Postman, what is television’s primary contribution to educational philosophy?9 (146)

            31.  What does decontextualized mean? (147)

            32.  What are the fundamental assumptions of televisual education? (147

            33.  What are some of the things a student learns collaterally from televisual instruction? (147)

            34.  What does Postman argue is the primary goal of televisual education? (149)

            35.  What is the dominant metaphor of televisual instruction? (148)

            36.  What is exposition?  (148)

            37.  What is the most formidable enemy of televisual education?

            38. From Postman’s vantage point why is it not sensible to turn the classroom into  a second-rate TV show?  (151)

            39. How does Postman respond to the claim that learning increases when information is presented in a dramatic setting, that
                  television can do better than any other medium.”(152)

            40. What is the relationship between televisual instruction and higher-order learning? (152)

            41. What are the perils of televisual education?

            42  In a televisual age curriculum designers often begin with what question. (153)

            43.  In the face of televisual instruction what is the role of books (153)

            44.  In a televisual age what are the criteria for selecting curriculum? (153)

            45.  How does Postman characterized investing 3.65 million dollars in the Voyage of the Mimi?  (154)

            46.  Why does Postman believe that the use of television in the classroom is often mindless and  invisible?

            47.  What do students learn collaterally by watching instruction such as the Voyage of the Mimi?

            48.  What is the potential risk when the discourse emanating from a culture’s major institutions  become a “perpetual round of
                    entertainment?” (156)

            49.  What is a Jeremiad? (156)

            50.  What is ideology?  (157)

            51.  Why do Americans eagerly embrace technology? (158)

            52.  When does television serve us most Ill? (159)

            53.  What do we need to do to combat the effects of living in a culture characterized by pervasive and ubiquitous media? (158)

            54.  What did Postman prophesize about the likely effects of computer technology? (159)

            55. Why should we demystify media? (161)

            56. If school remains our best hope for fostering media consciousness what is the question educators must ask themselves? (161)

            57.  From the perspective of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World we would not need to fear the banning of books? (vii)

            58.  In the book 1984, Orwell prophesied that truth would be concealed from us.  What did Huxley prophesize (vii)

            59.  In Brave New World Revisited what did Huxley fear civil libertarians would fail to take into consideration?