Language as our Media and Still Living in the Age of Television

Postman’s concluding claim is that Our conversations about anything are conducted in whatever "languages" we find it possible and convenient to use. We do not see anything as what it is, but what our languages are. Our languages are our media. I agree that without language we cannot have much media. However his statement about the 10 Commandments contradicts that idea that languages are our media.                           

We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture (Postman 9).

Postman states that since God can only exist though text, which was an unprecedented conception at the time, requires an abstract way of thinking. Because of this iconography became blasphemy so that this new God could enter the culture. If even God is too afraid of the media of depicting statues and pictures, when His way of conveying with the people is word. God must have felt that Word can be an inferior to iconography when expressing abstract ideas. “To say it, then, as plainly as I can, this book is an inquiry into and a lamentation about the most significant American cultural fact of the second half of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television”(8). Television is still the most primary media influence. The use of mobile devises is catching up to television. However the television companies still are the ones running the media on the mobile devises. People may not spend as much time watching cable or local television as was watched in 1984, but hours are spent on Netflix and ESPN 3 stations. These mediums are not directly from the local antenna or the cable provider, but they are still television. While we still get a lot of information off of our mobile devises, mostly we just get bits and pieces of information off these websites. Like our “news of the day” example mobile devises just give us bits and pieces of whatever seems to interest us. Television is still our primary source of media still in the year 2015.

Are the words on the tablets or the huge golden calf easier to conceptualize?

Fracking Regulations Retorical Annalysis

Fracking Regulations

     Fracking is one of the topics where in general most people do not know much about fracking or what it is. However these same people almost are always strongly for or against the use of fracking. The audience should have some knowledge about fracking. What exactly fracking is, that is not relevant to the situation of my rhetorical analysis. Since the issue is the amount of regulations on fracking, the only knowledge the reader needs to know is that fracking is presumed to harmful to environment, and is harmful to people’s health. There are also very few regulations on fracking at all, in the state of Texas there is no difference in laws between fracking and the use of a normal oil rig. According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Equality with standards determined from the railroad commission. There is also a lot of trouble getting any regulations passed. Some of George Bush’s officials where out with big oil companies, when they were supposed to talk about possible regulations. Instead, the “investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives””(New York Times). The purpose of this paper is to control the situation of fracking. The majority of the people who feel strongly about fracking know that there are some negative effects of fracking that are pretty serious.  The health risks of the use of fracking need to be controlled before there can be genuine economic growth which everyone loves so much. There is nothing wrong with the people who try to bring growth to the economy through fracking. They are just creating a situation, which is starting to have very negative side effects in the regions where fracking are done. There the people who live in those regions are not even reaping the benefits of fracking. Often the town does not grow in the positive way that they would hope. The crime rates in those regions go up the people who work on the fracking unit itself do not need the same recourses that the average people in the town use, so even there the locals mostly see the negative effects of fracking. The oil companies need to be able to control the situation. The oil companies need to make it to where the locals are still healthy and are able to control their own employs. But are not over regulated and the economic benefits are taken away. The situation between making money and improving the economy needs to be controlled and balanced between heath and environmental concerns.

http://www.tceq.texas.gov/assistance/industry/oil-and-gas/oilgas_air.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html?pagewanted=all