The spread of different forms of media has affected mankind in unfathomable ways. Whether it is through oral communication, print, television, or Internet, different forms of media are determined by their distinctive ways of presenting knowledge. Form governs the nature of the content communicated. Postman believes that television is a mediocre way of presenting information to society. While consciousness encouraged through print relies heavily on expression, education, and discourse, a lack of consciousness in watching television is due mostly on dependence on entertainment and a fragmented, superficial mind; Internet reflects characteristics of both print and television eras, but mostly is carving its own unique path in the world. The groundbreaking invention of the world’s first printing press in 1638 brought forth boom for enlightenment through education. The Protestant fueled age of Enlightenment had been ushered out by 1650, and laws in New England requiring the maintenance of a reading and writing schools were ushered in. Postman cleverly uses religious relevance in telling the history of print oriented education. The laws in New England referenced Satan, “whose evil designs, it was supposed, could be thwarted at every turn by education.” The stark transition from a religious age to an educational one, the Age of Exposition, began when “a great epistemological shift had taken place, in which knowledge of every kind was transferred to, and made manifest through, the printed page” (33). This great shift was so remarkable because it was the first shift the new nation saw regarding mass education. Prior, only religion had been used to explain the very mysterious world. The Age of Exposition made it so that “learning became book learning” (33). Learning in this age was no longer done through religious enlightenment; it was done through print and books, making it possible to produce a newer collective attention on learning. The Age of Exposition marked an era in which people were wildly subscribing to libraries. Books and their authors were remarkably more famous than any of today’s modern celebrities. Top sellers reached audiences much larger than what is fathomable today, due to the fact that libraries revolutionarily linked the working class and the elite alike. The new nation witnessed a new era of influence through print politically, as well. As if books were not enough to occupy the minds of citizens, pamphlets became the most modern way of distributing ideas in a political fashion. Books were ushered out because, as Benjamin Franklin observed in 1786, “Americans were so busy reading newspapers and pamphlets that they scarcely had time for books” (37). No longer exposed to just characters and story lines, Americans became familiar with the happenings in their surroundings; newspaper began to accelerate with “incredible rapidity” as “the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of all,” making it possible for all citizens to receive information at higher speeds than what they were accustomed to (38). Print helped news in this society spread like wildfire. Those who lived through the Enlightenment, or Empire of Reason, dominated the United States. Their offspring, however, were vastly different in that they saw a diversity of thought brought by the first printing press. Postman cites that among the number of Enlightenment offspring “were frontiersmen whom were barely illiterate, and immigrants to whom language was still strange” (57). Print changed the way people contemplated the mysteries of life. Culture then in turn began to resonate closely with print in every single way. Before, analytical thought was unbeknownst to the newborn nation. Print, however, made possible what Walter Ong calls the “analytic management of knowledge”, in which people began to “weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, [and] connect one generalization to another” (51). Close evaluation was unheard of in a society where education relied on faith. Analytical thought made longer attention spans possible, which contributed to the new forms of entertainment in Postman’s Age of Exposition. Long attention span made possible the ability to pay attention to long speeches – so much so