The Age of Missing Information (Plume) [Paperback]

Bill McKibben (Author)

Book Description

Series: Plume | Publication Date: May 1, 1993

The author of "The End of Nature" asks an intriguing question: Which provides more "information," 103 cable channels showering viewers with beguiling factoids--or a weekend in the woods?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this worthy but belabored attack on television, McKibben compares his experience watching 1700 hours of videotaped TV unfavorably to that of contemplating nature in the Adirondacks. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The wonderfully fluent young author of The End of Nature (1989) here softens the lamenting, doomsday tone of that book, counting on impressions of sweet nature to bring us to our senses. By contrasting the shallow information he absorbed by watching more than 1700 hours of cable video--the entire output of the Fairfax, Virginia, cable-TV system--to the deep knowledge he gained from a short camping trip in the Adirondacks, McKibben advances the subversive idea that TV has actually made us less informed by blinding us to the subtlety and power of unmediated experience in nature. ``Time for a swim. I ease myself down from the rocks into the chilly water, feeling the mud between my toes.'' Again and again, McKibben contrasts such quiet, plainly stated sensory impressions, the fruits of 24 hours spent alone atop an anonymous mountain, with the meaningless jumble of ``information'' that pours forth daily from the one hundred channels of the largest cable system on earth. The items he reproduces from TV--extracted from shows ranging from CNN to McHale's Navy to Wild Kingdom--are harrowing in their dumbness or their dramatic exaggeration or their disconnection from reality. What's worthwhile, though, are the arguments that McKibben weaves from these video scraps: that we must abandon mindless consumption for a stable, sustainable economy; that we can learn to draw emotional comfort from being part of a community; that we can learn to savor the physical and aesthetic pleasure that comes with enduring a little rain and cold and effort in our lives. Most of all, McKibben persuades us that there is ``another real world'' out there that also broadcasts around the clock--and that it has the power to transform us if we can stand still long enough to listen to its faint and ancient call. Suffering from bouts of verbal overkill, but, still, a brilliantly lucid and effective challenge to the myth of the Information Age. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Plume (May 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452269806
• ISBN-13: 978-0452269804
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, Deep Economy, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Information is not a substitute for nature--or for thinking, April 7, 2000

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age of Missing Information (Plume) (Paperback)

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.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thoughtful, Imaginative & Scarey look At Media's Effect!, June 21, 2000

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age of Missing Information (Plume) (Paperback)

Welcome to our teletronic nightmare! "The Age of Missing Information" is an intriguing book that covers an interesting and diverting subject; the human effects of sustained exposure to the seductive silver images flowing from our TV sets. As a people, we Americans are increasingly spending more time immersing ourselves in these unnatural, artificially generated, and carefully maintained environments, in what the author describes as the dangerously seductive throes of a quite strange (and unrepresentative) version of reality. This fascinating book cleverly illustrates how we are negatively affected by such massive (and more and more predominating) exposure to media-generated artifice.

Although the immediate focus of the book revolves around comparing what he learns as a result of a random 24 hour period in front of his boob tube as opposed to another day spent out in the natural world, what he really seems to be questioning is the electronic media's subtle but significant effect on our consciousness, on the way we perceive, interpret, and interact with the world outside our doors. It is chilling to recognize the degree to which sustained congress with the electronic media negatively paints, influences, and organizes our conscious perspectives on all we see and do. One of the most dangerous results seems to be a receding appreciation for and familiarity with the natural world. This can lead to some dangerous confusion about what is and is not real.

For people habitually electronically connected, the world of artifice & entertainment becomes the predominating influence on conscious awareness. What is the result of sustained exposure to the electronic equivalent of junk food? No one seems to know, but it can't be too great. The problem is that for a growing number of young people, this is the life style of preference, one that makes its devotees creatures drawn more to the flashy and entertaining artificial images flashing on their TV screens than to more natural features of the world outside the family den. Like Chauncy Gardener, the fictitious anti-hero of the movie "Being There", such individuals can believe anything and know nothing because all they appreciate and have any experience with is the sort of specious nonsense flooding out of their televisions. Next time you wonder why an impressionable 11-year-old kid can grab a pistol and shoot his teacher for little or no reason, ask yourself how much TV violence he has been exposed to. Although this book constitutes a chilling wake-up call, it is delivered in an humorous, entertaining, and quite readable narrative, and is a book I would recommend that any concerned adult read before letting Junior sit enraptured for hours by the TV set as a surrogate babysitter. Enjoy!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nature vs. Television, November 28, 1999

By 

Matthew Cuthbert "Matt Cuthbert" (Birmingham, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age of Missing Information (Plume) (Paperback)

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.