Haha... Haha... Haha...

The distinction between people laughing instead of thinking, and not knowing what they were laughing at and why they had stopped thinking is crucial to understand what Postman is trying to leave the reader with at the end of chapter 11. The thought of people losing all thought and going along with laughing with the television is terrifying but it is happening today. This can be seen especially on shows on kids channels such as Disney and nickelodeon when there is laughter that is prerecorded and edited into the show. By distinguishing between the two types of laughing Postman shows the sense of urgency that he feels about the problem of television as a media. The absence of thought is bad, the unintentional and prolonged absence of thought is a recipe for a cultural disaster.

I Failed

The night before the day where I was supposed to be limited to communicating only through illustrations, I had high hopes. I even thought it would be fun. I was wrong. The amount I communicate through words was evident as I sat struggling to get through physics class without talking. I made it through the hour, only after resorting to not trying to communicate at all. The media limited me, and my communications to others.
Another interesting experience was lunch. By that time I had already given up and embraced the idea of taking a quiz. Everybody at the table was not a quitter at this endeavor like I was. It was a very boring and confusing lunch. If the people at the table could of communicated better it might not of been a problem. However, the real problem lied with the media they were using to communicate their message. No matter how hard they tried they were limited by what they had to communicate to me with.

Postman on Youtube

When Postman talks about Marvin Minsky and his prediction that "humans will become merely pets of their computers" I could not help but to make a connection to when he writes "our own tribe is undergoing a vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of electronics. His statement in the video expresses fear of this transformation mainly by using the word "pet" and being owned by computers. This fear that he creates with the word is the same type of fear he tries to create when he rights "trembling shift" and "magic of electronics". By giving the computers and electronics characteristics of ownership and witchcraft, he effectively creates fear in the listener/watcher to get his point across.
The second parallel I noticed was in the video when Postman discusses humans and adaptation to mental and social situations and in his writing when he wrote about how the run for presidency has adapted into more of a good looks contest. In both of these adaptations he has a negative attitude about a humans capacity to tolerate adaptation such as when he talked about women adapting to abusive husbands, and when he goes on to say that bald people, and all other people with sub par looks are excluded from the presidency. Postman seems to like to put negative spins on situations by blowing them out of proportion.