Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It

by Thomas De Zengotita

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

302.23

Genres

Collections

Your library, Home Bookshelf

Publication

Bloomsbury USA (2006), Paperback, 304 pages

Description

In this utterly original look at our modern "culture of performance," de Zengotita shows how media are creating self-reflective environments, custom made for each of us. From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of mass terror, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from blogs to reality TV to the Weather Channel, Mediated takes us on an original and astonishing tour of every department of our media-saturated society. The implications are personal and far-reaching at the same time. Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. "Reading Thomas de Zengotita'sMediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend-the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside of your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions."-O magazine "A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media...."-Washington Post "Deceptively colloquial, intellectually dense...This provocative, extreme and compelling work is a must-read for philosophers of every stripe."-Publishers Weekly… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member maykram

Interesting book. Would recommned it to anyone with AN INTEREST IN MASS MEDIA AND CONSUMERISM AND HOW IT influences our lives.

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LibraryThing member lisahistory

Unevenly written - moments of brillliance and passages that needed a serious editor.

LibraryThing member timjones

An interesting analysis of the way our view of the world and our relation to it is affected by the many forms of representation which stand between us and the world. In my view, the book's effectiveness is lessened by the author's tendency to extend his arguments beyond the point at which he can

advance credible evidence to support them. Nevertheless, it's well worth reading - especially the chapters on the representations of childhood and of terror.

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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

I'm not a postmodern-theory wonk, but I'm going to guess that there's aren't any paradigm-busting breakthroughs in "Mediated." Its author, Thomas de Zengotita, more or less admits this when, early on, he lists his influences for the reader. "Mediated" isn't so much a book about media as a survival

guide for a wold that is increasingly dominated by it. It's not the artistic quality or usefulness of modern media that interests de Zengotita as much as the enormous quantity we consume. We're exposed to so many different representations, he argues, that it's become impossible to stem the flood and the term "real" has more or less lost its meaning. He can, on occasion, be a keen and thoughtful observer and makes a convincing case that the the "over-mediation" of our environment has challenged age-old concepts that our ancestors took more or less for granted. His voice – in stark contrast to most books of this type – is warm and personable, though readers that do not necessarily agree with his points may find him a bit smug. Still, this informality can also work against him, too, making his essays a bit diffuse and overlong, and it sometimes seems that he's working a bit too hard to find the dark side of generally beneficial technologies. As I neared the end of the book, I also noted a strong strain of wistfulness in de Zengotita's writing. I'm not sure whether this slightly mournful tone suggests a social or political conservatism or just a bent for what Susan Jacoby has called "cultural conservationism," but it's clear that the author fears that our overexposure to media is robbing us of something distinctly human. I know I'm writing this on a personal computer hooked up to a gigantic transcontinental information network, but there are days, dear reader, when I can't help agreeing with the guy. In any case, this is a fun, thought-provoking place to start for readers wanting to know to preserve their sanity in a world inundated by ever-shifting images.

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