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

by Todd Gitlin

Everyone knows that the media surround us, but no one quite understands what this means for our lives. In Media Unlimited , a remarkable and original look at our media-glutted, speed-addicted world, Todd Gitlin makes us stare, as if for the first time, at the biggest picture of all. From video games to elevator music, action movies to reality shows, Gitlin evokes a world of relentless sensation, instant transition, and nonstop stimulus. He shows how all media, all the time fuels celebrity worship, paranoia, and irony; and how attempts to ward off the onrush become occasions for yet more media. Far from signaling a "new information age," the media torrent, as Gitlin argues, encourages disposable emotions and casual commitments, and threatens to make democracy a sideshow.

Both a startling analysis and a charged polemic, Media Unlimited reveals the unending stream of manufactured images and sounds as a defining feature of our civilization and a perverse culmination of Western hopes for freedom.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Psychology, Technology, Read For School

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Todd Gitlin was an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and not very private intellectual. He was professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Joseph Garraty · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm generally sympathetic to the premise of this book--we're constantly bombarded by imagery and sounds, and some of that experience has the potential to degrade our thinking and the quality of our lives in some way. That being said, this book is intellectually sloppy, poorly written, and ultimately proves nothing it sets out to prove.

Most of the author's discussion of the history of media falls flat. It is nearly all based on the writings of one guy, Georg Simmel, and relies entirely on the premise that the "money economy" has fundamentally changed human beings into seekers of shallow pleasures. It does not try to prove this--merely asserts it as a given, and moves on. The book is pretty tough to take seriously after that. A similar lack of intellectual rigor is present throughout, for example in a particularly insipid bit about how we manipulate images on our computer screens and thus possess them, but because of the same action, they also possess us--a groundless assertion that isn't explained but assumed to be obvious.

But if the intellectual slop of the book doesn't put you off, the writing style will. This thing is written like a college freshman's term paper, where the freshman in question realizes he has two pages of actual content but the assignment is twenty pages. The result? Padding. My god, the padding. Nowhere can a fact be stated simply or with a few examples--instead, it has to be dragged out into fifteen, long after we get the point. For example:

"...the bountiful screen offers access indiscriminately to an episode of fictional domestic anguish, a tennis match, a sports utility vehicle driving over a mountain, a soccer score, a salad preparation, an animal cartoon, a futurist dystopia, a murder headline, a joke, a poker-faced policeman, a nude, a hurricane victim shivering in the cold, a jewelry advertisement..."

Used sparingly, lists like this can have great impact--but the author makes sure to pad something on nearly every page like this, apparently realizing his vacuous fifty-page essay needed to get pumped up to three hundred pages or so to sell in book form. It's virtually unreadable.

Overall verdict on this one is to avoid at all costs. A better, cleaner analysis can be found in The Dumbest Generation, and a good counter to those arguments can be found in Everything Bad Is Good For You.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have allowed the media power mongers to have control of our entertainment, our news (which is mostly entertainment), our internet, our social lives (Facebook), and our private lives (Facebook, again). We have willingly surrendered to their version of "reality", their editing, their programming decisions. Media controls us; we don't control it. Media, through technological advancements, controls the speed, the content, and the hours of our lives! It has sapped our strength and our minds. It has taken our souls and our individuality. And we willingly let it do so. Life has become whatever we see on a little 2" by 3" handheld screen!

[Phil Mendez · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Media Unlimited, Todd Gitlin sets out to "confront media as a whole." By the conclusion I wondered if maybe he bit off more than he could chew. With platitudes like "imagine the whole phenomenon freshly" and take "the media seriously," it seems unclear what exactly Gitlin wagered in the "gamble" he described in the introduction. The work is loaded with references, I'll give him that, but the effect feels more poetic and trivial that insightful.

He makes a few good points. For example: "declining cost turns out to be a more complex affair than the crisp formula 'cost declines, therefore usage increases.'" He then describes a cost-demand-technology loop. Other concepts, like the nomadicty felt like a stretch.

The six "styles of navigation" felt a little forced -- like an approximation of a Vladimir Propp's folktale characterization framework. This is around the place in the book where he presents an anecdotal story about getting misrepresented in a news bite on the Iraq war (a 4 hour interview turned into a 30 second soundbite), which felt out of place. All in all, parts 3 and 4 of the book felt weaker.

Still, I came to Gitlin interested in the origin of his term to describe media's "funhouse mirror" of reality. I feel like I have a better understanding of basic theoretical underpinnings to media--which should help the course I'm teaching.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Why are we [hateful at times and addicted to media]? The answer is brain wash — not the compressed, nightmarish high intensity, reprogramming made popular in movies like the matrix, but a prolonged marinating, that is unobtrusive moment to moment yet cumulative, from which the brain emerges irretrievably stained. “

“I propose that we stop— and imagine the whole phenomenon freshly, taking the media seriously not as a cornucopia of wondrous gadgets or a collection of social problems, but as a central condition of an entire way of life. Perhaps if we step away from the ripples of the moment, the week, or the season, and contemplate the torrent in its entirety, we will know what we want to do about it besides change channels.”

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A respected NYU journalism professor suggested I read a book called "The Whole World is Watching" by Todd Gitlin -- but I couldn't find it at the Border's Books in my parents' town, so I bought this one instead.

Only recommended for those few of us who actually think reading about "the media" in general is interesting...I'm a nerd when it comes to that stuff and even I found this book a little dry! Dry, but rather thought-provoking about the psychological reasons Americans have let our media become what it has become.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for a summer reading project and I would definitely recommend it as an informational read maybe for more adult readers. It uses language that older audiences would understand more than young children. And it is very informational. I really was intrigued, but I have to admit I got extremely bored and fell asleep reading it many times. I think that I could appreciate it later on in life, but right now, it isn't the type of read I would just pick for fun.

[Giuliana Chamedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

a light read, which gives a broad overview of some basic characteristics of our contemporary media-dominated culture. the writing style is fun, the references ecclectic but not unexpected (from simmel to marx to the marx brothers). still on the prowl for a more philosophical and historical approach to cultural imperialism...

[Mavis Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this book effectively changed at least part of my life. Everywhere I go now I see and hear things that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise thanks to the awareness Gitlin's book has brought. I study the media in society so this book was right up my alley. It's accessible and scholarly. One would do well to read it.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reasonably well argued though some parts made sweeping generalizations that weren't always backed up. The evidence tends to be more anecdotal than anything but I will admit that he definitely offered up a lot of food for thought. Although his writing was a little bulky, there were some nice lyrical lines. Still planning to make a friend read this.

[Paul Toth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been struggling with my embrace of media overload. This title helped me continue the struggle. However, I don't think there's a solution. Trying to avoid the technosphere is like trying to live in Los Angeles and not breathe smog.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reflections on how the mass media has turned into a "torrent of images and sounds", particularly since the Internet became prominent in our society. Occasionally unfocused, but more than a few trenchant statements can be found. Not essential, but worth reading.

[Graham · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish this washed-out hippy would just go the fuck away.

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rambling, incoherent monologue on the media and its place in the modern world. Written by a professor of culture and sociology at NYU.

[Whoof]

not really worth the time