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Description edit
For decades educators and cultural critics have deplored the corrosive effects of electronic media on the national consciousness. The average American reads less often, writes less well. And, numbed by the frenetic image-bombardment of music videos, commercials and sound bites, we may also, it... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Sergei Eisenstein: Add a description of this character.
- D.w. Griffith
- Jean Renoir
- Mark Pellington
- Jeff Scher
- Chuck Braverman
- Madame Bovary
- Flaubert
- Bazin
- Emma Bovary
- Mildred
- Bruce Conner
- Alan Kay
- Hank Corwin
- Daniel Boorstin
- David Berrent
- Greenaway
- Mckibben
- Roberta Goldberg
- Paik
- Clinton
- Walter Benjamin
- Martin
- Muybridge
- Aquinas
- Kuleshov
- Madame Bovaty
- Farnsworth
- Godard
- Wiseman
- Oliver Stone
- Dusenberry
- Charles
- Don Quixote
- Ralph Kramden
Quotes edit
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“The average fifth-grader reports spending almost seven times as much time each day watching television than reading. We are as attached, as addicted to television as we, as a society, have been to any other invention, communications medium, art form or drug. (6)”
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“Contemporary society- with its mastery of circuits and bits- chooses to think of its problems as unique. However, the video revolution is, by my reckoning, humankind's third major communications revolution, and the disruptions occasioned by the first two- writing and print- are surprisingly similar to those we are experiencing now. (11)”
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“Teach people to read and you do more than improve their access to information; you remake their understanding of the world. And it does not much matter what they read, as long as they read. "The medium" -not its content- "is the message." (21)”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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at some point in the second half of the twentieth century—for perhaps the first time in human history—it began to seem as if images would gain the upper hand over words.
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Writing’s great limitation grows out of its great strength: its abstractness. It is a system of representation, or code, that represents another system of representation, another code: spoken language.
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Painting is much more eloquent than speech, and often penetrates more deeply into one’s heart. —Erasmus
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One of the characteristics of the first era of any new form of communication is that those who live through it usually have no idea that that’s what they are in.
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However it is also the thesis of this book, a more controversial thesis, that the moving image has the potential to help resolve this crisis of the spirit.
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Writing would also significantly add to the power of the word, and in so doing it would change the nature of what could be thought.
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every new invention, technique or art form exacts a price in old ways and old patterns of thought. In time, we are usually repaid.
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Readers, in a sense, are no longer asked to see; they are simply asked to interpret the code.
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are visual animals,” Stephen Jay Gould, the scientist and science writer, has asserted, “and we think best in pictorial or geometric terms. Words are an evolutionary afterthought.”
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When they are young, stumbling and struggling through their first stages, all media imitate, slavishly.
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First Sentence edit
ABOVE: Television took only eight years to penetrate half of America's homes.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Mitchell Stephens (Author)
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 302.2345
Subjects edit
- Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology
- Books › Reference › Writing › Journalism
- Books › Reference › Words & Language › Linguistics
- Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Media Studies
- Books › Business & Investing › Skills › Communications
- Books › Entertainment › Television › History & Criticism
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