Blogging Ourselves to Death

I am reading 'Amusing ourselves to Death' for my Intro to Critical Theory class with Ronci. A lot of stuff in this book pisses me off because it seems too extreme, too apocalyptic. Life has gone on after TV and even the Internet, things are still kind of good and kind of bad.

However, this quote jumped out at me because of its relevance to blogging (the book was written in 1984, btw).

"The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraphy made information into a commodity, a "thing" that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning."

Blogs, anyone? And yes, I grasp the irony of me blogging about this. Neil Postman, the author, makes use of some Biblical imagery earlier in the book. He brushed against the idea that perhaps what God was saying when he outlawed graven images was that humans can't handle too many images, we need words. I don't know...

But speaking of Biblical imagery. Does this make anyone else think about the tower of Babel? That too much unfettered communication can be bad for a people?