Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives

While reading this book, I had the feeling that the author was making his observations from the perspective of an overgrown teenager, home from school around 3 pm and making puerile rants at the (...) tube, while downing a coke and potato chips. The author, who has said elsewhere that TV has become "our ground of being," borrowing Paul Tillich's phrase, doesn't seem to acknowledge or understand that most American adults work hard for a living and really don't invest a lot of mental effort in watching TV. They're actually busy with making dinner, dealing with their kids, paying the bills, downing a couple of cool ones, and getting up in the morning to do it over again. This is not to disparage the hard working American, but rather to suggest that most people really don't take TV all that seriously, or even pay it much attention. Just because the TV is on, doesn't mean people are watching it, or at least watching it critically. They have more basic needs to attend to. From 1980 to 2002, the time on the job (any job) has increased by about ten hours a week. I don't think information or pseudo information gets through to a culture that is so sleep-deprived. (...) Additionally, Gitlin takes his subject matter entirely too seriously. I mean understanding media was pretty much covered by McLuhan, and, just as A. Whitehead said that all philosophy was a footnote to Plato, one could say the same for McLuhan in relationship to his progenitors. Additionally, Gitlin's perspective's really couldn't be that profound since he seems to be called upon by the media as the academic in residence for news shows. I think it may be time for some producers to cull their rolodexes (or is that palm pilots?) I started this book, believing I would be at least somewhat intellectually challenged, but in the end, the sentences sort of just rolled over me like a syndicated drama series rerun.

As a fan of Gitlin, I was hoping that he'd give me the bottom line - his bottom line - on the air we breathe today, the same way that brave souls such as Lasch, Marcuse, and Bell have done. But Gitlin isn't brave. He admits, honestly, up front, that he will reach few conclusions, and merely wants to lay out what we face each day on the streets, on TV, and on the net. What follows is a stream-of-consciousness depiction of life today. I want more than that from Gitlin. I want his conclusions, not some lame statement that he hasn't reached any yet. He's not getting any younger. Lots of other fabulous thinkers have failed at this stage of their lives. It's time for his masterpiece - the next book, perhaps.

FYI - before you take in the reveiws below, know that Gitlin is considered advanced reading, and a standard among graduate level coursework in mass media, culture and politics. Consider 2003 version of "The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left".

This book tries to be to academic in its nature and is void of a head-on critique of how the media negatively affects us with constant agitation, violence and sales scams. To name some points. It does explain well some general structural issues in the media.
I heard a great interview with Mr. Gitlin on NPR a couple of years ago which prompted me to buy the book soon after. I was disappointed to read a more or less uncritical analysis of the media structure or how media constantly censors out this type of information "that's [not] fit to print" while distracting everyone with dumb advertisements. Sort of reading an advertisers gung-ho explanation of how interesting advertising is. If you are into the media and how great it is, this is "a great book"...

You read a lot about sex and violence in media and how our society is threatened by our casual acceptance of skin and death. But you don't read too much about the shear volume and pervasiveness of media. You also don't read too much about how media delivers feelings. These feelings we get from media in a way can substitute the feelings we get from action in real life. I love the topic, but did not give five stars because the point of the book never seems to really take off.