[jzb]

I think Postman might have liked a more interactive medium for entertainment. So the idea of having a Socratic discussion with ChatGPT rather than passively watching TV, where the program flits from "10 people dead in mass shooting" to "and now this... a Corgi that barks on key!"

But I'm thinking more of the immediate adoption of ChatGPT and similar tools to generate writing. What I took away from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" as a primary concern was the effects on discourse and thinking.

I need to re-read (well, re-re-re-read) AoTD because Postman's central theme was about the population being distracted by trivia and entertainment, but along side of that he discusses the transition from oral culture to written / print culture to electronic media culture.

He made a good case that our transition to electronic media has, bluntly, dulled our ability to reason. There's a set of critical skills that people use to engage with written text (though Postman might have been somewhat generous about this) that they don't use with TV News, etc.

So the idea of leaning on ChatGPT to generate written content, I think, would've alarmed him quite a bit. I'd love to read his thoughts on that, though maybe he'd be just as happy not to see these technologies come to life.