Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: All the TV shows he mentioned were from around 1990, so I didn't have a clue what's he's talking about. If you wanna read a good nature book, then read Walden by Thoreau.
Rating: 
Summary: a must read for all parents
Review: Bill McKibben has clearly defined what is at stake with our obsession with television. Not unlike the chronic smoker who cannot pull him/her self away from the smoke filled room; our society is mainlining television while the wild world outside (not so gradually) disappears. What we could gain if our choices are different in the future or what we will loose if we choose the status quo, are articulately presented for us in an engaging exchange of opposites. Orginally written as an essay in "The New Yorker" magazine under the title of "What's On?", this book is a must for all parents to non-chalantly give to that son or daughter who just can't seem to pull his or herself away from that all pervading box
Rating: 
Summary: informative and easy to read
Review: Bill McKibben is a great writer and deep thinker. This book is packed full of ideas that shows how television is not only ever-present and captivating but is teaching us, the viewing public, many lessons and a world view most of us would find abhorrent if we ever had an open debate about what ideas television should be promoting. This is one reason why our natural world is growing ever fainter while mass consumption of ludicrous products threatens to bury us. If you really care about your health and that of your children, not only would you think about their physical health, but you would be far better off being careful about the kind of garbage television is feeding their brain. This book makes clear the kind of information we do and more importantly, don't learn, by watching television.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary and thought provoking
Review: Bill McKibben is a great writer and deep thinker. This book is packed full of ideas that shows how television is not only ever-present and captivating but is teaching us, the viewing public, many lessons and a world view most of us would find abhorrent if we ever had an open debate about what ideas television should be promoting. This is one reason why our natural world is growing ever fainter while mass consumption of ludicrous products threatens to bury us. If you really care about your health and that of your children, not only would you think about their physical health, but you would be far better off being careful about the kind of garbage television is feeding their brain. This book makes clear the kind of information we do and more importantly, don't learn, by watching television.
Rating:
Summary: Deconstructing TV and the Loss of the Natural World
Review: If you became stranded in the wilderness could you build a fire without the aid of matches or a lighter? If your car breaks down can you fix it? Could you build a house or even a cabin? Do you have the necessary knowledge to grow a garden or recognize the difference between Nightshade and Snake Root? Fifty years ago the capacities required to carry out these tasks was common for many, but in today's age of technology many of the information required to carry out these tasks is considered by many to be nothing more than outmoded folk-knowledge, as trivia of a time long past.
However, the bits of knowledge that are required to carry out these ostensibly simple activities, McKibben argues, represent just a sampling of the vast storehouse of knowledge that humans, particularly those in industrial societies, have been losing since the advent of television and the dawning of what has become known as "the age of information."In this enlightening book McKibben examines whether this "age of information" is indeed a manifest feature of modern society and calls into question whether or not that which is transmited to us through television is useful information at all. In an attempt to answer this difficult question he carries out a substantial experiment whereby he compares a full day of cable television programming-all 24 hours of all 93 channels-in Fairfax, Virginia, to 24 hours spent camping alone atop a mountain in the Adriondacks. In so doing McKibben illustrates the considerable limitations of the media as a conduit for useful information, which is, paradoxically, a symptom and result of the very feature that makes it so appealing to so many: its seemingly endless variety. The consequences of such an overload of information that tv represents is its implicit resistance to continuity as it represents an endless stream of unconnected and disparate bits of information. This may be a good thing for advertisers and corporations that want you to buy their products or quickly forget the latest scandals, but it is decidedly dysfunctional to the acquisition of useful knowledge, which is precisely the point that Mckibben is trying to make against the conventional wisdom of most. The outcome of this type of hyper-structure has far reaching affects on our society and contributes significantly to the increasing loss of community that has been a feature of America since the late fifties and early sixties. As Mckibben ponts put, the result of this more mobile, individually patterned society has only been achieved at the cost of the corresponding human estrangement from nature and our place within the biospheric community, which as we have seen has serious consequences, not only for Americans, but, for all humanity. The Age of Missing Information is an important book that calls for the attention of anyone concerned with the disintegrating state of the environment and corollary loss of community that has resulted from this alienation. For those who are concerned about these mounting problems McKibbens book will surely invoke a reevaluation of the image of television in our society and the type of viewer/consumer it openly seeks to create. But, most importantly this book brings attention to the often extreme sacrifices that are made and the high costs of this media addiction.
---Hayduke66
Rating:
Summary: A critique of the Anti-Intelligence machine
Review: In this rather short book(250 pages)there is much to lament.
Bill Mckibben volunteered to undergo the torture of watching every program that filled the 90+ channels in a 24 hour period in Fairfax,Virginia in May of 1990.This required 90 volunteers (to tape their specific channel for 24 hours)to make his project a reality. As he begins to go through the 90 odd tapes full of dreck it is not surprising that Mckibben finds a wasteland populated by infomercial hucksters,inane blather on talkshows,endless streams of commercials hawking an endless train of useless garbage.None of this is anywhere near as disturbing as the fact that there seems to be nowhere in the world of television where intelligent debate,contextual information or even a concern with thoughtful dialogue about anything ever makes an appearance.It is apparent that tv itself is inherently useless except for the business of selling product and images.Jerry Mander,in his book_Four arguments for the elimination of television_ goes into much greater depth than does Mckibbon on this subject. The best observation of the entire book may be that tv constantly recycles the images,stories and shows of the last 40-50 years.What is insidious about this is that a generation that has grown up on tv is likely to have a vastly more limited grasp of history.If the young are swamped by the history of a short 50 years as though the world hardly existed before 1950,hasn't then the education process become that much more difficult?The decline of education has become so precipitous in the last 4-5 decades that standards have had to be lowered time and time again so that a large chunk of students don't flunk.It is the same now with teachers,who have sicced the NEA on school districts across the country that try and administer proficiency tests to make sure students are being serviced by competent teachers.If public school students of today had to meet the criteria of 70-80 years ago it is very unlikely that most would be able to do it.What does it say that 3/4 of Harvard students now graduate with 'honors'or that you now automatically get points on the SAT test for merely signing your name?Mckibben hints that we've had to dumb down our educational standards precisely because tv has to some degree impaired the learning process of the young,specifically in the areas of attention span and grasping concepts that haven't been sufficiently Sesame Streetized(dumbed down). For Mckibben,and I have to agree wholeheartedly with him,the greatest danger our nation,civilization and Democracy faces is the coming generations that have been marginally educated and have no concept of how our nation and Democracy was brought about and maintained.If the populace of the future is made up mostly of ignorant,ahistorical,consumer drones with no concept of how a civilization is made possible and what it takes in order to maintain the precious gains of civilization then aren't we looking into the abyss?If the curiosity,wonder and meaningful dialogue and understanding that makes the continuation of a viable society possible is buried under the shallow,banal,couch-potatoed,freeze-dried spectacle that is consumerist culture and the culture of ignorance that tv can't help but foster,then what are the chances that such a society and populace can survive and thrive?
Rating:
Summary: Nature vs. Television
Review: McKibben questions the term "information age" and sets out to discover whether he can learn more from a day of television (24 hours of programing from each of 93 channels) or from a day of hiking in the mountains. Though the results are arbitrary, it is, nevertheless, an interesting read that poses thought-provoking questions about important issues for our society. Most striking is the quick-cut writing style that parodies an erratic channel clicker.
Rating:
Summary: Information is not a substitute for nature--or for thinking
Review: The author taped all the TV shows being broadcast for 24 hours, then watched all of the shows over the necessary time period, and then spend 24 hours alone with nature. There are some well-thought and well-articulated insights in this book. Information is not a substitute for nature. The information explosion is drowning our senses and cutting us off from more fundamental information about our limitations and the limitations of the world around us. Television really did kill history, in that it continually celebrates and rehashes the 40 years of time for which there is television film on background, and overlooks the 4000 years behind that. The worst disasters move slowly, and the TV cameras don't see them.
Rating:
Summary: Information is not a substitute for nature--or for thinking
Review: The author taped all the TV shows being broadcast for 24 hours, then watched all of the shows over the necessary time period, and then spend 24 hours alone with nature. There are some well-thought and well-articulated insights in this book. Information is not a substitute for nature. The information explosion is drowning our senses and cutting us off from more fundamental information about our limitations and the limitations of the world around us. Television really did kill history, in that it continually celebrates and rehashes the 40 years of time for which there is television film on background, and overlooks the 4000 years behind that. The worst disasters move slowly, and the TV cameras don't see them.
Rating:
Summary: not the point
Review: The fact that the previous reviewer had no clue what the author was talking about supports McKibben's ideas: about how short-lived television programming is, and how it is part of and contributes to a culture that is (superficially) changing at breakneck speed. Besides, the specific TV content McKibben references is not central to the book; one can easily substitute more recent equivalents of the infomercials, commercials, and music videos to make the same points. It's McKibben's ideas that are central here, not the cute or quirky moments gleaned from his TV-watching marathon. And while these ideas are largely not very revelatory, they are very important and demand consideration by the reader.
|
