Media Virus!

Rating:
Summary: There IS Real Life!
Review: I follow the adventures of this young man in the realm of literature for some years now and had the opportunity to exchange some e-mails with him due to my quite provocative position on his Bull (the on-line novel) idea.

This is to warn you that this review might not be the most objective one!!!!

So much I have heard about „Media Virus" that, after falling in love with Rushkoff`s „Children of Chaos" and enjoying „Coercion", suffering through „Cyberia" and „Ecstasy Club" (see my review) and short affair in the bus with „Bull" (printed version) I felt an urge to complete my studies in Ruskhoff by getting hands on „GenX Reader" and „Media Virus".

And the result is dissapointing.

Media Virus is the collection of couple of deliberations of the proud member of TV nation about his daily bread: TV (sitcoms, shows and characters, including infamous American TV politics). The only common denominators of said deliberations are
a) quite useful metaphor of viruses (it works most of the time and we shall give credit to the author for that at least) and
b) the passion and pride Mr. Rushkoff has for GenXers and their (or ours, shall I say) ability to digest, analyse and take use of any electronic medium and stand high doses of television [garbage].

So much for pros, compagneros.

As for cons, my first problem is that this work has no structure and ends like a newspaper article, with some small deliberation over point of view of apparently strange person with (within the given context of his deviant opinions of world) quite normal name „Genesis P-Orridge). BTW, in an attempt to collect at least some sympathies for the devil, author, while introducing said figure, tell us that Genesis has to live outside UK for being persecuted there for his worldviews (later we read that the guy has some sadomasochistic tendencies and tendency to share them via video with others...). I do not know, but if our generation needs hero authors, we should look for someone like Solzhenitsyn or Voinovich maybe...

Second, it is poorly researched...Well, frankly, there is no research behind the book whatsoever... Two or three quotations of McLuhan, something on the top of it, rest is what Douglas saw in telly... Scary...

One thing that seems like funny to me, after what I have read by this author, is his apparently unlimited ability to „analyse" any piece of TV [garbage] from most unbelievable and unseen angles and within most strange context, this all using quasi-scientific jargon and methods of explanation.

If you want to see Mr. Rushkoff in his best, try to ignore his first books (including this one) and jump right into his recent writings. As he wrote, GenX lives without history and we shall look at his work from the same position...

Still, I believe, there is culture that is popular (although free from hidden agendas:-)), some art that is being created just to share the beautiful with others, that there is some music being composed in an effort to reach out for the divine
and finally,
that there is life to live even if you do not have the high-end television set and 155 channels to surf.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important Book on Media of the Past Ten Years
Review: I use this book in my class on media and popular culture. It really stands as the most important book on media culture since McLuhan - and rivals his insights, at that. I see one of the home-critics above has criticized Rushkoff for using the word 'media' as a singular verb, as if this were some sort of misprint. In fact, Rushkoff spends several pages explaining how the media needs to be treated as a single entity. It is an organism, with properties and behaviors all its own.
This is a groundbreaking work of media criticism, and a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of media today.

Rating:
Summary: Aaaaarghhh!
Review: Mr. Rushkoff dedicates his book, "To my mom and dad, for letting me watch as much TV as I wanted". What a mistake they made! His relationship to TV is like that of the brainwashing victim to the captor.

He is thorough. There is no tedium as deep as his plowing through the phenomena of Michael Jackson, Madonna, and all the rest he remembers.

Along the way, he has concluded that the word "media" is a singular noun. Tell THAT to the folks at Merriam-Webster!

Further, he doesn't know the difference between "illicit" and "elicit", and writes "discreet" when he means "discrete".

Rating:
Summary: Seminal Book On Media Theory, Memetics, Postmodern Culture
Review: Since its release in 1994, 'Media Virus' has become Douglas Rushkoff's most influential and most popular book.

Rushkoff skillfully dissects such 'memes' as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Rodney King beating tape, and the pervasive influence of MTV editing. He finds Queer sexuality in 'Ren & Stimpy', social agendas with John Morgenthaler's 'Smart Drugs' campaign, and closes the book with an insightful and rare interview with the influential musician, raver, and performance artist Genesis P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Pigface, Thee Majesty).

Much of what Rushkoff has written has become de facto teaching within university media courses, and Rushkoff's insights have been clarified and commented upon by many other social theorists and cyberpunks. This is a valuable book because its accessible easy to read style makes it a good introduction to a field that many find foreboding, difficult or complex. Rushkoff is careful to include case-studies and examples such as detailed semiotic analysis of 'The Simpsons', and to provide the relevant historical and industry contexts. The book's influence can be seen by the prevalence of Madison Avenue techniques subsequent to the book's publication, and the popularity of mutant media.

Well worth checking out!

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, blurry thinking, and irrelevant
Review: The best Rushkoff can do in this slapdash book is to rehash some old ideas about media and provide little support for his hasty and superficial analyses. The concept that ideas evolve and are transmitted through media is unoriginal and has been with us for years: Rushkoff repackages this well understood idea using refernces to "memes," which simply recasts these older concepts using the cloak of biological metaphors (ideas being transmitted as viruses, spreading a kind of idea "DNA," etc.) . Such a metaphor --which was originated by other theorists -- would be useful only if it could be used to predict the success or failure of particular paradigms and the degree and rate at which they might spread -- but no such logical, helpful, or meaningful exploration of the metaphorical device is to be found in this book. Furthermore, Rushkoff supports his ill- ormed conclusions -- they come off as though from a guy verbally riffing on a hunch on his couch -- you know that guy who got stoned at a party and just spouted some ideas off the top of his head? -- and failing to support them or investigate them in any convincing manner. He uses examples from popular culture that seem drawn rather arbitrarily from the media ether, and many of his examples are based upon "facts" about these items of popular culture which are simply wrong. There's a reference to the Batman comic books, I believe, where Rushkoff misstates the action in the book or comic to support his point, and gets the facts wrong. The result is that he actually undermines his conclusions and demonstrates their shallowness. Overrated by others, perhaps because so many people understand so little about the media, or are eager to find a guru of the modern technological age. Rushkoff is not that guy and this book shows it.

Rating:
Summary: McLuhan for the 21st Century
Review: The bizarre negative reviews in this space belong to a couple of "conspiracy theorists" who are writing bad reviews of everyone associated with the Disinformation web site.

It's a shame, because this is probably Rushkoff's best book - at least his most important one. It put him on the map as today's most significant media theorist, while being simple enough for pretty much anyone to understand.

The point of the book is that seemingly innocuous or culturally insignificant media nonetheless contain the most pressing ideas and constructs of a given age. So Rushkoff deconstructs media iconography from Beavis and Butt-head to Michael Jackson, showing the underlying cultural agenda beneath them - not beneath them, but within them.

If the book seems unoriginal now, some ten years after it was first published, that's because this is the book that LAUNCHED these ideas. Ever hear of "viral marketing"? That came from this guy.

Look at his documentary on the Frontline website called "The Merchants of Cool" if you want to see how his thinking developed, and got a bit cooler on these developments.

But definitely read Media Virus if you want to understand all the thinking and advertising that came from it.

Rating:
Summary: The book that unwillingly created a new trend in advertising
Review: The information in this book, while it was written, was used primarily by artists. The whole concept of a media virus is basically twofold. 1)To make a subversive or controversial message (meme) seam innocent, harmless, or impotent. 2) To make that same message propagate itself through some means, including that very same controversy that you originally try to hide. Intrusion and propagation. Injection and infection. Just like a real virus, or a computer virus, only a media virus is a mind virus, a mental image, sound, slogan, event, or whatever, that gets into your head, stays there, and spreads itself by means of your mouth and vocal chords.

The book was meant to be, I believe, a mental exercise of awareness. It's tone and content seam more reminiscant of a late night cafine and marijuan-induced intellectual discourse than a research book. However, that doesn't mean that whats in the book won't teach you anything. Far from it. Some people in the advertising industry thinks of the concepts in this book as the next step in the evolution of marketing. Now that I've read the book, I can see lots of "media-virus" tactics used in advertising, from the simple, (the energiser bunny, floating from commercial to commercial), to the more complex and subversive (Calvin Klien's psuedo-kiddy porn jean commercials which got banned).

A media virus is, to put it simply, the most effective way available to those in the media to get a message from thier mind into the minds and conversations of the average viewer. If you've ever talked about a commercial before you've seen it, because somebody mentioned it, you're probably talking about a media virus.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but flawed
Review: This book has some interesting analysis of television programming and political campaigns but fails with attempts to compare pop culture and chaos theory. In this regard the author misunderstands fractals and confuses feedback (the cycling of an output back into its original source) with ordinary propagation (the progress of an output to successive new points). Since the chaos "virus," to use the author's terms, pervades the book, this is a serious flaw in my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Are you infected by a Media Virus?
Review: While some academics still worry about people watching television, Douglass Rushkoff celebrates the power of individuals to create their own media presence in "Media Virus."

In a witty style, Rushkoff praises the MTV generation for their ability to do - and understand - more than one thing at a time. Written in 1994, the book's seems a bit dated in its predictions... and more than slightly optimistic in speculating about the liberating aspects of new media to resurrect the political passions of Americans. Media Virus remains an excellent overview of the tensions and possibilities that television presents for political activists.