I'm currently reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business. Postman's argument in this book that our society is in a death spiral because we have become an image-based culture rather than a word-based culture. As we turn from print media to image-based media, we are losing our ability to think deeply, seriously, abstractly, and rationally, and there are enormous negative results when an entire culture does this. Postman's insight is amazing, and his ideas are even more relevant in 2015 than they were in the 1980's, when he wrote the book.

Postman begins with an insightful contrast between two dystopian novels: Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World. Postman shows that although 1984 was more popular, Huxley was actually the one who was more accurate:

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared was those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. . . . As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.