This print culture produced habits of mind on the part of both leaders and broader publics, Postman asserts, that encouraged serious public discussion and debate of substantive issues. In general, both leaders and broader publics were also better able to manage such complex discussion and debate. A good line by Postman: “We might even say that America was founded by intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a communications revolution to recover” (41). In sum, a medium strongly influences the message it carries, and a print-based medium emphasizes exposition, logical coherence, sequential development, objectivity, and reflection (63).

Toward the end of the 19th century, Postman claims, print-based culture began to pass, to be progressively replaced by electronic media. As a culture moves from an emphasis on print to one based on pictorial images presented directly into the home, Postman claims, its emphasis, ideas, and even truths pass from exposition to “show business” (1984, 63). Postman characterizes the dominant ideas and ways of thinking that are fostered by electronic …show more content…
With the coming of the telegraph, news begins to emphasize speed, quantity, novelty, and distance in reportage, often at the expense of relevance and coherence (67). Combined with the graphics revolution, photography, motion pictures, and then radio and television, the new electronic media present a world that is bordering on seeming chaos (70). Stories and headlines come from all parts of the globe, often isolated from any sort of coherent context or connection to the local (70). Postman characterizes this as a “peek-a-boo world” in which stories and images constantly vie for our attention and then are quickly forgotten (77). This new electronic media does not merely supplement the old print culture, but rather it tends to supplant it, in time becoming the “dominant means for construing, understanding, and testing reality”