Rating: 
Summary: Worthless
Review: In the introduction to MEDIA UNLIMITED, author Todd Gitlin vows to depict the "baffling media totality itself." The result is a book filled to the brim with tired cliches and overused platitudes about the information overload that's being dispensed by the multi-media, the ever-increasing pace of modern life, the erosion of American political life, the vacuousness and disposability of popular culture ("Not for American popular culture the presumption of Art with a capital A," writes Gitlin. Are we, as readers, supposed to be surprised or spurred into action by this?). Part of the problem with this book is that Gitlin has nothing original to say. Another problem is that he seems to assume that all Americans are soulless drones who spend most of their free-time watching TV and surfing the Net -- and implicitly addresses his book to them, when it's obvious that these people simply don't read polemics by sociology professors. It never seems to occur to Gitlin that there are Americans who don't spend all their free time watching TV and having their value systems influenced by it, who have a strong sense of self that doesn't get drawn into rampant and uncontrollable consumerism by billboard advertisements, who have a general contempt for the multi-media in all its manifestations, and who fill their lives with good books, good music, good film, good food, intelligent friends and interesting conversation about important subjects. In short, it doesn't seem to occur to Gitlin that there are people in this country who have satisfying personal lives apart from the maddening multi-media-mediated crowd. At the end of the day, this book isn't worth analyzing in depth. I'll just finish off with a quote [p. 71] that for me seems to typify its overall lameness: "Turn on the TV, graze around, let the tsunami of images and information wash over you. A baseball game, with stats pouring across the screen--not only batting averages, RBIs, and ERAs but the on-base percentages, the speed of the last pitch, the number of pitches and first-pitch strikes thrown, the ball and strike percentages, even a visual of the batter's 'hot zone' and a cutaway to the new relief pitcher, resolute, with a 'scouting report' slashing across his image." First of all, all of these things, which in and of themselves, are immensely trivial, Gitlin seems to think are worthy of dire sociological cerebration. Second, he also seems to think that these trivial details about televised baseball are emblematic of the deleterious information overload of popular culture. Finally, he seems completely unaware that rather than being a source of consternation, many of these things have improved immeasurably the entertainment value of televised baseball, which in its history has had a striking tendency towards dullness. Misconceived analysis such as is contained in the above quote abounds on every page of Gitlin's book. There isn't an original thought in it. The author frequently embarrasses himself by attempting to coin clumsy aphorisms and cute puns. He has no solutions for or real insight into the bigger issues he raises. He is a remarkably dull writer. Finally, his boring, unrevealing book is merely one more contribution to the glut of information overload he's apparently attempting to redress. Don't waste your time, like I did, reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: In the introduction to MEDIA UNLIMITED, author Todd Gitlin vows to depict the "baffling media totality itself." The result is a book filled to the brim with tired cliches and overused platitudes about the information overload that's being dispensed by the multi-media, the ever-increasing pace of modern life, the erosion of American political life, the vacuousness and disposability of popular culture ("Not for American popular culture the presumption of Art with a capital A," writes Gitlin. Are we, as readers, supposed to be surprised or spurred into action by this?). Part of the problem with this book is that Gitlin has nothing original to say. Another problem is that he seems to assume that all Americans are soulless drones who spend most of their free-time watching TV and surfing the Net -- and implicitly addresses his book to them, when it's obvious that these people simply don't read polemics by sociology professors. It never seems to occur to Gitlin that there are Americans who don't spend all their free time watching TV and having their value systems influenced by it, who have a strong sense of self that doesn't get drawn into rampant and uncontrollable consumerism by billboard advertisements, who have a general contempt for the multi-media in all its manifestations, and who fill their lives with good books, good music, good film, good food, intelligent friends and interesting conversation about important subjects. In short, it doesn't seem to occur to Gitlin that there are people in this country who have satisfying personal lives apart from the maddening multi-media-mediated crowd. At the end of the day, this book isn't worth analyzing in depth. I'll just finish off with a quote [p. 71] that for me seems to typify its overall lameness: "Turn on the TV, graze around, let the tsunami of images and information wash over you. A baseball game, with stats pouring across the screen--not only batting averages, RBIs, and ERAs but the on-base percentages, the speed of the last pitch, the number of pitches and first-pitch strikes thrown, the ball and strike percentages, even a visual of the batter's 'hot zone' and a cutaway to the new relief pitcher, resolute, with a 'scouting report' slashing across his image." First of all, all of these things, which in and of themselves, are immensely trivial, Gitlin seems to think are worthy of dire sociological cerebration. Second, he also seems to think that these trivial details about televised baseball are emblematic of the deleterious information overload of popular culture. Finally, he seems completely unaware that rather than being a source of consternation, many of these things have improved immeasurably the entertainment value of televised baseball, which in its history has had a striking tendency towards dullness. Misconceived analysis such as is contained in the above quote abounds on every page of Gitlin's book. There isn't an original thought in it. The author frequently embarrasses himself by attempting to coin clumsy aphorisms and cute puns. He has no solutions for or real insight into the bigger issues he raises. He is a remarkably dull writer. Finally, his boring, unrevealing book is merely one more contribution to the glut of information overload he's apparently attempting to redress. Don't waste your time, like I did, reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing Look At How Media Affects Our Perceptions!
Review: In this wry and perceptive tome, sociologist and social critic Todd Gitlin takes aim at the plethora of ways in which the modern electronic media has become such an integral part of our cultural environment that it acts to influence us in a number of important and substantive ways. In an argument reminiscent of both Karl Marx and c. Wright Mills, he writes convincingly of the insidious influence such media influence acts to rearrange our social, economic, and even psychic awareness of everything around us. Therefore, he argues, our very feelings and ideas are saturated by and therefore encumbered with, a dose of supersaturated information-rich data, and it is difficult to understand where the influence ends and we as substantive human beings begin. For what is coming at us is a revolutionary force, a virtual torrent of information hurtling down on us with increasing speed. This onslaught of media-propelled information has become a flood of images, data, and symbols we are scarcely aware of in terms of its ability to influence and guide us in our daily lives and the degree to which we carry it around with us as perceptive baggage. In this sense we are manipulated to an unknown extent by this baggage and by the predisposition to seeing the world in a certain way. Seen in this way, it threatens our individuality and our ability to participate meaningfully in a democratic setting. So, while it is commonplace to observe that the media surrounds us in all we say and do, it is less well understood how profoundly this media presence affects us in almost every aspect of our lives. Few critics point out the degree to which this immersion in a world flooded by media manipulation of every element of social, economic, and political phenomena, or what this immersion does to us individually in terms of our own ability to perceive the truth, or to our own critical thinking or cognitive functioning. Just as C. Wright Mills warned of the potential for political evil rising from the domination of the mass society stemming from the media's ability to slant social perceptions, Gitlin points out the degree to which our habitual reliance on the media for most of the information we need and use to conduct every aspect of our lives also makes us a prisoner of the quality of the information we are given in viewing the outside world or even ourselves. This is a terrific book, one that takes an intriguing look at certain elements of out media and how it affects as citizens, companions, and individuals. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: McLuhan simplified
Review: Professor Gitlin's work is interesting, but he uses his introduction to distance his thoughts from McLuhan's, the rest of "Media Unlimited" reads like a Cliff's Notes version of "Understanding Media" and "The Medium is the Massage." I thought "Media Unlimited" was fascinating at times (as all his books are), but it failed to deliver on the promises of the introduction. After saying that "the medium is the message" means almost nothing, the next 200 pages go on to explain in great detail how the torrent of media is, in the McLuhan sense, the message. It's not what is being said but how it is constantly washing over us that's important. Nothing new here. His explanation of the word "speed" is fascinating, as is his hypothesis that the media torrent dictates a tendancy toward conservative values (an idea Chomsky kicked around years ago with his realization that in the television medium he must sound like he's from Neptune). There are gold coins to be found if the reader persists. Perhaps you'll love it if you skip the intro. PS--If you're curious about why we're reading and writing these reviews as though they matter, pick up Gitlin's book. Great material on exactly this topic.
Rating:
Summary: McLuhan simplified
Review: Professor Gitlin's work is interesting, but he uses his introduction to distance his thoughts from McLuhan's, the rest of "Media Unlimited" reads like a Cliff's Notes version of "Understanding Media" and "The Medium is the Massage." I thought "Media Unlimited" was fascinating at times (as all his books are), but it failed to deliver on the promises of the introduction. After saying that "the medium is the message" means almost nothing, the next 200 pages go on to explain in great detail how the torrent of media is, in the McLuhan sense, the message. It's not what is being said but how it is constantly washing over us that's important. Nothing new here. His explanation of the word "speed" is fascinating, as is his hypothesis that the media torrent dictates a tendancy toward conservative values (an idea Chomsky kicked around years ago with his realization that in the television medium he must sound like he's from Neptune). There are gold coins to be found if the reader persists. Perhaps you'll love it if you skip the intro. PS--If you're curious about why we're reading and writing these reviews as though they matter, pick up Gitlin's book. Great material on exactly this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: MEDIA UNLIMITED IS RATHER LIMITED
Review: This book fails to explain the major purveyor of media trash and nonsense- the public relations industry.Indeed its hard to think of American media without an avalance of daily PR.Why is it missing from this book ? Well, name a book on the media avalance of rubbish that deals with the role of the PR industry?This is a narrow slice of explanatory material, too narrow to satisfy anyone familiar with the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: great media criticism
Review: This book picks up where Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" left off. "Media Unlimited" is media criticism of the best kind, which is to say that it is consistent with what one would expect from someone as intellectally talented as Gitlin. Gitlin lucidly analyzes the obvious yet invisible media torrent that dominates our daily existence. Gitlin's media critique is persuasive without being pushy,and moreover, it's deadly accurate and timely. This is the right book for the right time
Rating:
Summary: Needs some spark
Review: 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"...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Media Theory
Review: Todd Gitlin has been on the forefront of media theory for a long time. As a professor at NYU, his classes are next to legendary. If anyone is set to step into the footsteps of marshall McLuhen, it is Todd Gitlin. Media Unlimited looks at the ubiquity of modern media in our lives. With a special focus on television and the Internet, Gitlin examines how we have become over-stimulate dto the point where we can no longer think or feel for ourselves...we merely act according to the audio and visual triggers that the media has given us. Media Unlimited is an excellent book with scholarly ideas but remains very readable. An valuable work all around.
Rating:
Summary: Media Meditations
Review: Todd Gitlin's latest offers a balanced dialectical view of TV and its dangers, real and imagined. This is one of several books that offer a needed corrective to Bernard Goldberg's superficial analysis of the so-called liberal media, Bias. For example, the Gulf War coverage was highly inaccurate in its claim of (4% of the bombs used on Iraq being smart bombs or highly effective Patriot missiles. Of course, such reporting does the bidding of Bush I's war agenda. This is not to say that there was no justification for stopping Saddam as Gitlin points out. There is a focus in the early part of the book on speed, accelerated living, and its effects. James Gleick's book Faster which came out a few years ago, has greater depth than Media Unlimited but lacks the breadth and far ranging sociological insight of Gitlin's book. As one comes to expect from Gitlin, there are many other fascinating observations. America has been particulary adept at utilizing formulas to mass produce culture. American culture has consequently become the lingua franca (an obsolete and ironic term) of world culture. IT also has the advantage of a market that is both massive and heterogenous, in another words, representative of the world in which cultural products will eventually be marketed. Tocqueville pointed out as early as the 1840s that America cultivated entertainment over elevation, fun not refinement. Gitlin also tells us that cable TV offered us diversity and thus the end of the shotgun approach to entertainment.Other points: critics rarely address the popular passion for the will not to know--the need for illusion. Goldberg et al pay attention: "When the evidence for a particular change is selective at best or largely anecdotal, , when we ignore awkward counter-evidence and leap too easily from a belief about bias to a belief about its effects, we are awkwardly trying (and failing) to come to grips with the media as a whole, and to register its protests." p.142
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