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Media shapes culture
Kyle Treige
June 2025
Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death opens with a comparison between two dystopias: 1984, where authoritarianism crushes truth, and Brave New World, where an overflow of entertainment erodes our ability to think. Postman sided with Brave New World—and reality, it seems, has too.
His central thesis is simple but profound: media shapes culture. Every shift in dominant media from oral storytelling to the printing press, from radio to television reshapes how societies think, what they value, and what they consider truth.
When Postman wrote his book in the 1980s, TV was the dominant force, and he warned of its corrosive effects on attention, discourse, and civic life. But he also glimpsed what might come next. Computers were on the horizon. What he couldn’t have known was how quickly media would evolve: the internet, social media, Twitter, podcasts, and now generative AI.
Postman’s framework still holds. Twitter helped make a reality TV star president. Podcasts like Joe Rogan’s now rival traditional news networks in influence. And as media shifts, so too does power.
But what struck me most, reading Postman now, wasn’t the past. It was the future. If media shapes culture, what happens when media itself is generated by AI?
What happens when attention-optimized algorithms produce infinite content faster than we can evaluate its truth—or even its intent? What happens when our feeds, our art, our conversations, and even our beliefs are subtly shaped by machines?
If Postman was right—and I believe he was—then the next chapter in our culture will be written not just by humans, but by models. And that’s a chilling thought. Because while media always shaped culture, it used to do so within the bounds of human creativity, bias, and intention. Now, the bounds have shifted.
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman describes an era when communities would gather for seven-hour lectures. Abraham Lincoln, before he ran for Senate, was a frequent speaker at such events. The audience’s attention span, comprehension, and intellectual expectations were simply different. They were shaped by the media of the day—by books, speeches, and shared physical spaces.
Compare that to today’s TikToks, tweets, and YouTube shorts. Again, the medium shapes not just the message, but the mind.
So here we are, on the cusp of yet another transformation. Generative AI is not just a new medium, it’s a force multiplier. And it’s up to us to shape it, or be shaped by it.
This is a note to self: remember that media shapes culture. And with each new wave of media, we inherit the responsibility to steward it wisely.
We’ve learned, painfully, that progress isn’t always positive. That culture doesn’t evolve in a straight line. And that the way we communicate—what we read, what we share, what we listen to—sets the foundation for what we believe, who we trust, and how we live.
Let’s not forget that.