What’s wrong with operant conditioning? It evokes images of rats pressing levers, but surely constant feedback and facing ever increasing, carefully graded increments of difficulty is a pretty great way to learn? Also, some of the greatest music works like operant conditioning on me, with my perhaps very limited appreciation of music, in that it very frequently sets up situations that demand musical resolution, but I can’t figure out how it is to be achieved. It’s often then resolved by the brilliant adaptation of a musical idea that has already been made familiar earlier in the piece, which makes the resolution retrospectively appear inevitable. This process then repeats itself frequently, and it’s largely this that holds my attention for the whole piece.

I disagree that you can compare a debate in 1858 to a debate today, because the lively culture of public speaking has almost died, to the point that people are apparently more scared of public speaking than death, and when forced to speak publicly try to shift as much attention as possible onto Powerpoint slides. People today often hate public speaking, whereas in the 19th century many people grew up reading Cicero and Demosthenes and with an ideal of the active citizen. They thus had an appreciation of many of the techniques of rhetoric, and quite possibly some experience of public speaking themselves. People don’t have this today, and it’s consequently very much more difficult to appreciate, and maintain focus on, speeches.

I think that the Third Great Awakening and the current, so-called Fourth Great Awakening do have some parallels, from what little I know. Both reached prominence during the apparent death-throes of an American Dream (the belief that any hard-working, decent man could eventually escape “wage slavery” and become a boss in the former case; the belief that any decent, hard-working person would get progressively richer in the latter). Both campaigned against a ’social evil’ (alcohol; extra-marital children) by promoting abstinence through education, and by making alcohol/abortion as difficult as possible to obtain. The leading politician of the Third Great Awakening was W.J. Bryan of Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial fame. Both movements had a belief in the imminent Second Coming. Both made highly populist appeals to the ‘ordinary people’ being oppressed by depraved elites. I bow to your greater knowledge of the religious philosophers of the late 19th century, but I can at least say that there are ‘non-movement’ conservative philosophers such as Michael Sandel, who has made highly respectable critiques of John Rawls and liberalism more generally, and served in the administration of Bush the Lesser.

- The point about hurricanes/earthquakes is that prior to any ability to influence or take action, the news was so much disaster porn, fascinating but divorced from our lives. We had our heartstrings tugged, or were inspired by a miraculous escape and in doing so the news was fitting the same purpose as the fiction we read or plays we saw.

- Like the equivalency with Tetris, but we’re talking about two different levels of focus with that. It’s operant conditioning at best. It’s more appropriate to look at whether people could accept the same behaviours under similar conditions: could we have a presidential debate with the same format? I think not.

- I think that conflating the great awakening with the current fundamentalism is too superficial. There wasn’t the same blind faith in the literal nature of the Bible and a greater willingness to challenge. Some of the great religious philosophers were pushing the boundaries of their thought in that time. I don’t think one can say the same of Pat Robertson.

I think you display a healthy scepticism about some aspects of digital tech, but I disagree about a few points…

I don’t see how the length of the L-D debates necessarily proves that they had a longer attention span in 1858 than we do. I believe the art of rhetoric had a much bigger role in the culture and education systems back then, and that speeches were in some ways a form of entertainment. We have lost a lot of the cultural context, and therefore they may appear more unusual achievements, and thus more awe-inspiring. If long attention spans are in themselves impressive then I would say that spending 7 hours listening to a highly-charged and expert debate about issues that would imminently tear apart the country is less impressive than some 1990s gamers spending 7 hours a day rearranging falling bricks.

Richardson might have written a mighty long book, but surely the reason why few such long books are written these days is that it’s really, really uncomfortable to hold up a 1500 page hardback book for hours upon hours. Many authors write multi-volume works that comfortably exceed 1500 pages- I believe you’ve read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, for example. Ten years ago people would have mocked the idea of a 600+ page book aimed at kids. Then J.K. Rowling came along. If ebooks take off then the ergonomic problem of long books would be solved and we might see much longer books.

As an aside, people don’t seem to have a problem following 6 month or multi-year TV series such as Lost or 24. Just as those ‘happily gargantuan’ books of the Victorian era were very often released in serial instalments.

A bit later in the article you come close to saying that the current fundamentalist revival in the US could only have appealed to minds simplified by TV… And yet, in the very same year that the Lincoln-Douglas debates apparently demonstrated the sophistication and attention to nuance of “the wider culture”, the ‘Third Great Awakening’ of American Evangelism kicked off. Periodic religious revivals seem to be part and parcel of American culture, regardless of what media they have.

Your second point about the news ceasing to be actionable and becoming entertainment seems to me to overstate the ability of early newspapers’ readers to actually have power over their surroundings. Most people didn’t even have the vote back then. I can’t say that I’ve ever read a typical early newspaper, but I would guess it wasn’t all “Village Duck Pond Weeds Crisis: Volunteers Needed!”, and that it also included stories about endearingly troublesome cats etc.

I don’t get your hostility to the image: why is a photo necessarily more subjective than a written piece? And why does it brook no challenge or refutation? The Chinese who objected to photos purporting to be of riots within Tibet in 2008 analysed and challenged those photos pretty thoroughly. Also, I think you’ve read this: “The man finishes his story, — how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist.” There’s no reason why you couldn’t refute an image with a better one, surely?

There may be fewer words in a half-hour programme than in a newspaper column, but we may remember far more about the TV programme than the newspaper column. What probably made a bigger impression on the general public- endless publications of statistics on the developing world or Hans Rosling’s TED data visualisations?

Thanks for displaying your ability to sustain focus enough to read this post;-) and good luck to making events far more actionable!

Chris

Go to amazon.com and type in ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’ and click the link that says ‘100 books cite this book’. You can bet if they cited Postman’s book they have something interesting to say, too. We can extend Postman’s argument with the web by saying the Internet not only turns everything into entertainment, but all these social websites and blogs turn us into narcissists. Postman said that technology is always a Faustian bargain, something is gained but something is lost. I always say technology is great so long as we use it as a tool. If you can’t take three months (or any time) off the Net than the Net is using you and you are the tool.