media theory reading circle
SECOND WEEK - (16 August 2026)
This week we will be reading the first three chapters of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.(https://ia601905.us.archive.org/32/items/Various_PDFs/NeilPostman-AmusingOurselvesToDeath.pdf).
Read:
1. The Medium is the Metaphor (pgs 3-15)
2. Media as Epistemology (pgs 16-29)
3. Typographic America (pgs 30-43)
Next week we will read the rest of Part 1.
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WHAT IS THIS?
this is a reading and discussion circle, focused on media theory, spectacle, and the politics, sociology, and anthropology of technology through an STS lens. we will read a wide range of authors and viewpoints, and welcome any additions!
what is STS? STS stands for science and technology studies, an interdisciplinary field focused on the metastudy of science, big Science ™️, technology, and the interplay of those elements in society.
a brief glimpse at authors, pieces, and themes we will discuss include:
•Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
•Jean Baudrillard, especially Simulacra and Simulation and
•Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
•Byung Chul-Han and the idea of the neoliberal technological paradigm as one of self-panopticization and self-arresting of agency
•Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
•Walter Benjamin, the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
•Theodore Adorno, excerpts from Minima Moralia and broader cultural industry critiques
•Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society
•Martin Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology
•Oswald Spengler’s Man and Technics