Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives.Todd Gitlin Todd Gitlin (born 1943) is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications. . Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Metropolitan, 2002. This book explores a wide range of media, from video games to elevator music, action movies to reality shows, billboards to waiting-room TV, and punditry to Internet exhibitionism exhibitionism /ex·hi·bi·tion·ism/ (ek?si-bish´in-izm) a paraphilia marked by recurrent sexual urges for and fantasies of exposing one's genitals to an unsuspecting stranger. ex·hi·bi·tion·ism n. , to evoke a world of relentless sensation, instant transition, and continuous stimulation. Its author, Todd Gitlin, shows how, in their nonstop quest for novelty, the media foster distraction and inattention in·at·ten·tion n. Lack of attention, notice, or regard. Noun 1. inattention - lack of attention basic cognitive process - cognitive processes involved in obtaining and storing knowledge ; how "all-media, all-the-time" promotes celebrity cults, paranoia, and irony; and how any attempt to fend off media becomes the occasion for more media. Rather than an unambiguously positive "new information age," Gitlin believes the media frenzy encourages disposable emotions and casual commitments, and threatens the development of an informed electorate. Gitlin, a New York University New York University, mainly in New York City; coeducational; chartered 1831, opened 1832 as the Univ. of the City of New York, renamed 1896. It comprises 13 schools and colleges, maintaining 4 main centers (including the Medical Center) in the city, as well as the professor and the author of Inside Prime Time, The Twilight of Common Dreams, and six more books, argues that when it comes to media analysis we see the trees but not the forest. Media reviews may carefully scrutinize what the media is doing, but they overlook Marshall McLuhan's basic admonition Any formal verbal statement made during a trial by a judge to advise and caution the jury on their duty as jurors, on the admissibility or nonadmissibility of evidence, or on the purpose for which any evidence admitted may be considered by them. : the medium is the message. And that message is being delivered in an unending stream of manufactured images and sounds that threatens to drown out our ability to think in a rational and reflective manner. Part thoughtful analysis, and a charged polemic, Media Unlimited asks that we consider media, not just what we see on TV, hear on the radio, or read in the newspaper, as a complex environment--a place where rivers flow with projected images, forests are groves of sounds, and the sky is filled with advertisements. And, while it may be a challenge for adults to construe construe v. to determine the meaning of the words of a written document, statute or legal decision, based upon rules of legal interpretation as well as normal meanings. media in this manner, it is even more of a problem for young people, since they are so susceptible to media's lures. In their case, if I may offer a suggestion, the schools can play an important role by providing media literacy education. EDITOR: MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D. |
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