This book was far more provocative and principled than I expected for the somewhat banal title. It is about a lot more than television too. Jerry Mander talks about the advertising industry, civil rights, democracy, media, perception, propaganda, the power of images, our relationship with technology and scientific progress. It is a grand discussion, in service of a strong point about the danger of television.
The thesis is that the medium of television has deep flaws that are a fundamental and inextractable part of the medium. I’ve considered this myself long ago about film; I believe it is fundamentally flawed because it’s a prohibitively expensive medium accessible only to large teams with funding, and is primarily motivated to make returns. This is not some sinister ‘capitalist plot’, but simply the fact of film. I don’t believe the culture of the world should be manufactured by some wealthy people in California. However, Mander has a deeper and more interesting insight, owing to his career in advertising.
The contemporary reader should instantly recognize the parallels of the important properties of televisions, and modern smartphones. It is a shame to think about the fact that, thanks to movements in software in the late twentieth century and the explosion of availability in the twenty-first, computers could have been the new medium of the public, free from economic limitation and the meddling central authority. Unfortunately, the smartphone has superseded the desktop as the primary device, and has taken us back to locked systems, with efforts to fight this being only the domain of enthusiasts.
The discussion of the physiological effects of television watching was interesting, but most of it is irrelevant now because of how our technology has changed. Television has wider displays, uses constant pixels rather than scanning the screen, doesn’t have that high pitched whirr. It’s still not healthy, but at least most of the points about the physiological effects are not at all relevant today.
The rest of the points made are very strong and principled, and still provide insight into our use of smartphones today, though it is an incomplete picture. As a bonus, it gave me an insight into the fact that people’s feelings of being helplessly drawn to their device, is not a new phenomenon at all. Just as people complain that scrolling TikTok turns them into zombies, people said the same when they watched television. This is valuable for younger people like myself who might assume the problems of smartphones is something never before seen.
I’m not one for sweeping statements, so I really mean it when I say everyone should read this book. You won’t hear me see that about any old book, not even the famous ‘must-reads’ like 1984, Brave New World, or a book I personally love like Don Quixote. I believe this book is supremely important, because the smartphone is the contemporary of television, retaining many of the same negative points plus many more, but holds an even greater social importance than the television could have ever dreamed of.
We learn in schools that fruit grows form the ground. We see pictures of fruit growing. But when we live in cities, confined to the walls and floors of our concrete environments, we don’t actually see the slow process of a blossom appearing on a tree, then becomng a bud that grows into an apple. We learn this, but we can’t really “know” what it means, or that a whole cycle is operating: sky to ground to root through tree to bud ripening into fruit that we can eat. Nor do we see particular value in this knowledge. It remains an idea to us, an abstraction that is difficult to integrate into our consciousness without direct experience of the process.
- “Television is an addiction and I’m an addict.”
- “My kids look like zombies when they’re watching.”
- “TV is destroying my mind.”
- “My kids walk around like they’re in a dream because of it.”
- “Television is making people stupid.”
- “Television is turning my mind to mush.”
- “If a television is on, I just can’t keep my eyes off it.”
What makes these matters most serious is that human beings have not yet been equipped by evolution to distinguish in our minds between natural images and those which are artificially created and implanted.
Why does banning such a technology seem bizarre? One answer to this question lies with the absolutely erroneous assumption that technologies are “neutral,” benign instruments that may be used well or badly depending upon who controls them. Americans have not grasped the fact that many technologies determine their own use …