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Neil Postman on Telegraphy and the Information-Action Ratio

Since we live today in just such a neighborhood (now sometimes calld a ‘global village’), you may get a sense of what is meant by context-free information by asking yourself the following question: How often does it occur that information provided to you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would otherwise not have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? For moist of us, news of the weather will sometimes have such consequences; for investors, news of the stock market; perhaps an occasional story about a crime will do it, if by chance the crime occurred near where you live or involved someone you know. But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action. This fact is the principal legacy of the telegraph. By generating an abundance of irrelevant information, it dramatically altered what may be called the ‘information-action ratio.’

Prior to the age of telegraphy, the information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had a sense of being able to control some of the contingencies in their lives. What people knew about had action-value. In the information world created by telegraphy, this sense of potency was lost, precisely because the whole world became the context for news. Everything became everyone’s business. For the first time, we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, New York: Penguin, 2006 (20th Anniversary edition), pp. 67f, p. 69.



last updated august 2016