BOOK
$25
Why communication is killing us
NYU professor Todd Gitlin winces when people refer to the media as a collective noun - "the media is" instead of "the media are." Nevertheless, he embraces the meaning conveyed by the reviled usage. His new book portrays the media as a monolithic and unavoidable element of the current human condition.
"The obvious but hard-to-grasp truth," Gitlin writes, "is that living with the media is today one of the main things humans beings do." We're living with unprovoked Flash animations and pop-up windows online, blaring soundtracks in retail stores, and scrolls, headlines, and subheads on cable news. As with molecules in the air, we're hardly aware of the individual elements - we're just breathing them in.
What effect does it all have? Gitlin gives us a laundry list. The communications "deceive," "broadcast a limiting ideology," and "convey diminished images of the good, the true, and the normal." But the worst offense is that "they saturate our way of life with a promise of feeling." It's this vague, empty promise that has us hooked. As in our least fulfilling relationships, we want what we can't quite have or what isn't really there at all. "The torrent of images, sounds, and stories will widen," he writes, "but neither its volume, speed, nor bandwidth can be counted on to deepen democracy, or for [that] matter, the quality of feeling or commitment with which people conduct their lives." Our reality, in other words, is becoming largely just the look and feel of reality. And this, Gitlin convincingly if underwhelmingly argues, is unfortunate.
The author makes a point of contrasting his views with those of Marshall McLuhan, but the two are closer than he thinks. According to Gitlin, the experience of the media shapes our lives more than the actual content of this experience. For McLuhan - who in his day was primarily concerned with the effects of broadcast television - the medium, or mode of delivery, shapes our lives more than the message it delivers. Either way, content runs dead last.
But Gitlin takes the dimmer view. He offers no plan for changing a phenomenon that's hollowing out our emotional life. Perhaps that's because, at this point, the situation seems all-encompassing and impossible to alter. On the other hand, unlike "media" or "air," "people" isn't a singular term. Individuals have been known to ignore theories about their behavior and through their actions, to prove those theories wrong.
Henry Holt: www.henryholt.com.
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