I don't need no education...

The distinction that Postman makes in the last paragraph is that we often laugh and do not know what we are actually laughing at.  His solution for us is that we need to drop the entertainment and educate ourselves. Through entertaining ourselves, we are losing an understanding.  If we don't understand the problem, then how do you think that we will find a solution? In most cases, we will not.  By understanding the issue, we will be able to make decisions for ourselves and not just go with what everyone else thinks.  We were given free will for a reason.  Therefore, we need to educate ourselves so that we are not dependent on the world and we can rely on ourselves. 

Never Make Me Not Talk Again!

The assignment to not talk again was EXTREMELY hard.  I did not think that this was going to be that hard but I was strongly mistaken.  There were many words or phrases that I could not convey with illustrations.  Many people did not know we had the assignment and it was difficult sharing with them what we were doing.  I was grateful for the teachers that would share with others why we could not talk and also those who were understanding.  There were some teachers who would not go along with this experience and I was very upset with them because it was not hurting them in any way. 
During my day of no talking, I was on my way to 5th hour.  In 5th hour, I am an office aid.  When Tina, Paige, and I arrived, we soon realized that none of us could talk.  One of the tasks we have to do in office aid is answer phones and none of us could.  The secretaries were understanding and let us continue our assignment, but asked why we were given this assignment.  It was very difficult to illustrate and act out why we were doing this besides that it was an assignment.  They enjoyed guessing though and said that we made the office very interesting that day.
Through this experience, I have learned that I am very thankful that we are given the gift to talk.  At the end of the day, I couldn't stop talking.  I also learned that I never want to go a day without talking again.  I love talking. I am glad that I completed the assignment, but am even more glad that it is done.

Entertaining Ourselves to Death

Postman’s speech and his book relate to each other in many ways.  One of these ways is shown towards the end of Postman’s speech when he reveals that “we will talk more with machines than we will with humans.”  This relates to what he had to say in chapter 1 on page 6.  On this page Postman states that, conversation refers to techniques and technologies metaphorically to exchange messages.  This means that our conversations will not be by being with the person, but we will converse with them by using technology.  Another way that Postman’s speech parallels to his book in chapter one is when he states what Henry David Thoreau had to say.  Thoreau stated, “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.”  When Postman quoted this, I think that he meant that even though we are constantly creating more things, it’s a never ending cycle because we will always want to create more.  We want to entertain ourselves to death by creating more machines to do this.  This is just like when Postman talks about Los Vegas as a symbol of entertainment (Pg. 3,4) and how lots of people go there for the entertainment.  We as people, have a habit of constantly entertaining ourselves.