The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing lots of things, not knowing them.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
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In Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," he discusses the shift in how knowledge is perceived in an age dominated by telegraphic communication. The traditional printed page, once a rich source for understanding and acquiring knowledge through its comprehensive, sequential structure, has lessened in significance. Instead of emphasizing the depth of knowledge, contemporary communication prioritizes quick, factual information, often disconnected from context and deeper understanding.

This change redefines "knowing" from understanding intricate connections and implications to merely accumulating pieces of information. The rapid and fragmented nature of telegraphic discourse does not allow for historical context or qualitative assessment, leading to a superficial grasp of facts. Thus, the measure of intelligence shifts from deep comprehension to the breadth of information one can recall, highlighting a potential decline in the quality of public discourse.

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Amusing Ourselves to...
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Other quotes in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of face, {in Einstein's case, a photograph of a face}. Of words, nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of face, {in Einstein's case, a photograph of a face}. Of words, nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture.
What I suggest here as a solution is what Aldous Huxley suggested, as well. And I can do no better than he. He believed with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
What I suggest here as a solution is what Aldous Huxley suggested, as well. And I can do no better than he. He believed with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
Controlling your body is, however, only a minimal requirement. You must also have learned to pay no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page. You must see through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings of the words they form. If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be thought stupid.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
Controlling your body is, however, only a minimal requirement. You must also have learned to pay no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page. You must see through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings of the words they form. If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be thought stupid.
Although the general character of print-intelligence would be known to anyone who would be reading this book, you may arrive at a reasonably detailed definition of it by simply considering what is demanded of you as you read this book. You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this {with this or any other book}, our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
Although the general character of print-intelligence would be known to anyone who would be reading this book, you may arrive at a reasonably detailed definition of it by simply considering what is demanded of you as you read this book. You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this {with this or any other book}, our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency.
But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.
That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached.
Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to...
That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached.
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Other quotes in intelligence

I don't deny that there are problems in the intelligence world, but I would argue that in the UK we try to uphold the highest standards in the world.
William Hague
I don't deny that there are problems in the intelligence world, but I would argue that in the UK we try to uphold the highest standards in the world.
We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.
Will Cuppy
We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.
I am beautiful for a brainy woman, brainy for a beautiful woman, but objectively speaking, neither beautiful nor brainy.
Rebecca Goldstein Mind-Body Problem
I am beautiful for a brainy woman, brainy for a beautiful woman, but objectively speaking, neither beautiful nor brainy.
It's always taken a lot out of me, being smart.
Eudora Welty The Ponder Heart
It's always taken a lot out of me, being smart.
An intelligence completely dissociated from the physical, or at least an impression of it, was a strange, curiously limited and almost perverse thing, and the precise form that your physicality took had a profound, in some ways defining influence on your personality.
Iain M. Banks Surface Detail
An intelligence completely dissociated from the physical, or at least an impression of it, was a strange, curiously limited and almost perverse thing, and the precise form that your physicality took had a profound, in some ways defining influence on your personality.
Table, ivory ornament, rainbow, onion, hairstyle, mollusk, sabbat, violence, cuticle, melodrama, gutter, honey, handkerchief ... nothing moved her. {...} Nothing managed to be more than it really was. They were just things, prisoners of their own essence.
Jonathan Safran Foer Everything Is Illuminated
Table, ivory ornament, rainbow, onion, hairstyle, mollusk, sabbat, violence, cuticle, melodrama, gutter, honey, handkerchief ... nothing moved her. {...} Nothing managed to be more than it really was. They were just things, prisoners of their own essence.
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