What defines our Culture?

This is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. Even though this is not really what a tree looks like, because we have been conditioned by culture to know from a very young age when we draw trees in class that trees have a brown trunk and green leaves and thus we recognize this as a painting of a tree. But this is not what a tree really is, trees our not limited by what we believe them to be in our culture. We know that trees can have yellow, red, and brown leaves and different colored trunks. Yet, if we ask someone to draw a tree, it will almost certainly always be a green leafed brown tree. Postman addresses this in his novel, this being how a painting or a literary piece can influence what we see as a norm in our culture.

Postman says many things in the first chapter of his book. While you may or may not disagree with some of what he says, his underlying theme revolves around a fact about communication through different forms of 'media'. By media he, and I by extension, do not mean just text messages or facebook. We mean any for of communication whatsoever: verbal speech, the different forms of writing, the radio, etc. This fact, that is almost irrefutable, is that the way we think and act and the way our culture is formed is 100% connected to the forms of communication available to us. You may have realized by now, that based on my own personal experience and musings, that I agree with Postman When he says that "our metaphors"(Postman 15)  which by extent means our languages and forms of communication, "create the content of our culture"(15) and that because our means of communication change our society so much that this more recent change to communication through things like television will bring along a change in society. I think his argument is very solid, he mentions many well known figures from history and also more recently. The weakest aspect in my opinion is, ironically, his use of language. I feel like the book itself is not really geared towards scholars or people already very informed on the the topic but towards "culture watchers and worriers"(5) like he mentions. However, the language he employs and the way he communicates is quite dense and frankly a drab and long read, which reminds me of The Shallows which I read over the summer. They both seem like long lists of evidence with explanations, which while still informative, are not very thought provoking, since they are put forth as undeniable facts, instead of suggestions, so all one has to say is 'no I disagree' and the argument means very little at that point.
I think his overall argument, even if television is becoming less and less the major form of communication, still holds very true. However, I feel like most of our perception of the world now comes through a different medium, that is to say the Internet. The Internet is interesting because even though it is a mixture of writing, audio, and video they are all communicated very differently and thus give us a different perception of reality. In the Shallows the author explains how our own form of thought mirrors the presentation of the Internet, and if our thoughts define our culture does this not mean that the Internet, our leading form of communication, defines most of our culture? I would have to say, yes it does.