martes, 27 de noviembre de 2018

Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death




You've read 1984, you've read "A Brave New World", you've read "The Information" (you should), you've read McLuhan, and you want more connections between those, Amusing Ourselves to Death. It's like a missing (darker) chapter from "The Information", or an update to "A Brave New World".

Filled with data, and very up to date (being written in 1986).  I'd love to see an extension to it talking about the nonsense of information flood and "And now ... this" we're in now.  Neil Postman hints at gamification without naming it and speaks with great clarity about the continuous amusement we're in nowadays. Slot machines aren't mentioned in the book, but the fact that now we know many successful platforms/services/soma base engagement on the same algorithms than slot machines makes the book scary when looking at both directions from when it was written. Both as constataion of facts and premonitory.

Here's a very nice review about it, (funnily enough with nice pictures to help the reader)

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