When reading Neil Postman's books, the reader notices that most of his ideas could be put together to form different ideas. For example, lets take "The Typographic Mind? which is chapter four of his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death and "The Necessity of Gods? which is chapter one of his book, The End of Education. When the reader takes these two chapters and combines the ideas, then, new and profound ideas are discovered. In "The Typographic Mind?Postman's main focus is his view on the impact that television has on people and how the medium of communication has changed since the 1850's. In "The Necessity of Gods? Postman's focus is on the idea that everybody needs a reason to learn and to work; there needs to be a reason for school. He makes clear that if a reason does not exist, then, school will end pretty soon; if it has not yet ended. .
One of Postman's central ideas in "The Typographic Mind?is people are not suppressed by a lack of information but by too much information. Postman realized that the abundance of information made people less and less successful in gaining knowledge from this information. He also talks about the printed word. He says that the world of the printed word required a high amount of logic while the television, with its high definition pictures, doesn't. In this chapter Postman starts of by mentioning the Lincoln- Douglas debates in which these two politicians communicated to the people through the use of language; they spoke to their people. Now a day people have transitioned from a text-based society into an image-based society. .
In the "Necessity of Gods?Postman talks about a reason that everybody needs to learn and to make school have a point. In this chapter Postman looks to answer the question,?What are schools for??School's role is to pass on the five narratives and thus provide the young with "reasons to continue educating themselves". Postman refers to his narratives as "gods" in the sense that they tell of origins and futures, give meaning to the world and provide a sense of "community", "personal identity" "continuity" and "purpose".
