Amusing Myself to Death with this Book

In his speech, Postman makes the comment that the new human dilemma is the “delusion to believe that technological changes of our era have rendered irrelevant the wisdom of the ages and the sages.” He then proceeds to talk about a technology that had been recently improved: cloning. I think his quote and discussion of cloning go very well with where he wrote about Las Vegas becoming our “national character and aspiration.” The other ages Postman mentions – the Age of Boston and the Age of New York – reveal the great accomplishments of our nation and are something we should be proud of. On the other hand, Las Vegas symbolizes this Age of Entertainment and Technology and the deterioration of our values as a society, as we are becoming increasingly concerned with all aspects of our life revolving them instead of what is right. We are making previous values our society held dear useless and irrelevant with all our new technology. This is proven true with cloning. The whole idea of cloning was to replicate a person when he or she was born and then store the clone away in some warehouse until the “original/real” person needed a spare limb or something. Cloning has completely shattered our belief in the value of the human life by saying that we are defining the standards of a human being and a clone, although very much alive and a human no doubt, is not a human but merely a tool at the disposal of the person who is in need of them. We are using technology to twist our world and make what we’re doing appear acceptable. We want progress, progress, progress and more and more technology, no matter what it takes or what it costs us. If our values don’t fit with what needs to be done, we’ll bend them to align with what we want. And like smoke signals and fat men running for president, all our values no longer matter when we keep creating newer and more advanced technology.