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The Age of Missing Information (Plume)

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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.

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!

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.

This book is a meditation on the effects of television on society. After living in an area with no TV reception for a few years, McKibben embarked on massive project to try to understand what information television conveys and how this affects society. He had a very novel approach for this project: he identified Fairfax County, Virginia as having the greatest number of cable TV channels at the time (almost 100), so he recruited a Fairfax volunteer for each channel to record the entire day's broadcast on a video cassette recorder. The day chosen for the recording was May 3, 1990. On the day the tapes were being recorded, McKibben went hiking near his home in the Adirondacks, and kept a careful journal of all his observations up on the mountain. Then, for the next year, McKibben watched the TV tapes of May 3, for 8-10 hours a day, taking notes and analyzing what kinds of information they contained. In this book, he reports on the kinds of messages that were being spread through the broadcasts, and contrasts this to what he learned by observing the natural world on the mountain. The methodology may sound a little trite, but the project was very well executed, and McKibben leaves us with many disturbing points to ponder.

Some critics of TV say that TV is bad because watching all the violence on TV makes people, especially children, violent. Others point out that the gratuitous violence is lamentable, but worse is the fact that watching TV contributes to hyper-consumption. McKibben takes the criticisms of the media to a much higher level. In this extended essay, he points out how much TV plays a role in how we see the world, how we expect it to work, and how the essential mismatch between the TV version and reality leads to unhealthy expectations or apathy. He argues that TV has become a guiding force of unparalleled strength, but where is it guiding us to? As he points out "Why do we do the things we do? Because of the events of our childhood, and because of class and race and gender, and because of our political and economic system and because of `human nature'-but also because of what we've been told about the world, because of the information we've received....What you do day after day is what forms your mind." If you spend your days watching TV, you are relinquishing control of the forces that will guide you to the broadcasters, whose interest is purely commercial, not helping you or society to be better.

McKibben notes out how stories repeated during childhood contribute to one's system of ethics. In older societies, such tales were told by elders around the campfire, or read by parents to young children. But since the 1940's, the TV has taken over both the role of the campfire and the trusted elders. Instead of being brought up on moral or Biblical tales, today's children are raised on a fare of endless re-runs, from the Brady Bunch to Leave It to Beaver, to Gilligan's Island. Some of these shows contain moral lessons that we might deem acceptable, but they can lead children to develop unrealistic expectations of the world (McKibben reminds us that no one is ever shown working on the Brady Bunch, not even Alice the maid). The only show I watched with great regularity as a child was MASH, and as McKibben pointed out the moral lessons conveyed by the program, I realized that I had indeed incorporated exactly these elements into my value system, a fact which I find very disturbing. What other legacies did early TV watching with leave me?

Although the chapters of the book are arranged by the time of day during the 24 study period, each one also has a topical focus. For instance, McKibben points out how nature programs distort watchers' expectations of life in the natural world, leading us to believe that every moment will be filled with rare thrills. He discusses the focus on money collection rather than on spirituality in much of the religious programming, and points out the inherent distortion of TV news in giving equal time to both slow news days and big events. He also meditates on the loss of knowledge of the real world and practical skills, such as the ability to predict the weather by reading the sky or to grow and prepare one's own food. All in all, the book contains much to ponder or discuss.

Bill McKibben is a great writer and deep thinker. This book is packed full of ideas that shows how television is not only ever-present and captivating but is teaching us, the viewing public, many lessons and a world view most of us would find abhorrent if we ever had an open debate about what ideas television should be promoting. This is one reason why our natural world is growing ever fainter while mass consumption of ludicrous products threatens to bury us. If you really care about your health and that of your children, not only would you think about their physical health, but you would be far better off being careful about the kind of garbage television is feeding their brain. This book makes clear the kind of information we do and more importantly, don't learn, by watching television.

In this rather short book(250 pages)there is much to lament.
Bill Mckibben volunteered to undergo the torture of watching every program that filled the 90+ channels in a 24 hour period in Fairfax,Virginia in May of 1990.This required 90 volunteers (to tape their specific channel for 24 hours)to make his project a reality.

As he begins to go through the 90 odd tapes full of dreck it is not surprising that Mckibben finds a wasteland populated by infomercial hucksters,inane blather on talkshows,endless streams of commercials hawking an endless train of useless garbage.None of this is anywhere near as disturbing as the fact that there seems to be nowhere in the world of television where intelligent debate,contextual information or even a concern with thoughtful dialogue about anything ever makes an appearance.It is apparent that tv itself is inherently useless except for the business of selling product and images.Jerry Mander,in his book_Four arguments for the elimination of television_ goes into much greater depth than does Mckibbon on this subject.

The best observation of the entire book may be that tv constantly recycles the images,stories and shows of the last 40-50 years.What is insidious about this is that a generation that has grown up on tv is likely to have a vastly more limited grasp of history.If the young are swamped by the history of a short 50 years as though the world hardly existed before 1950,hasn't then the education process become that much more difficult?The decline of education has become so precipitous in the last 4-5 decades that standards have had to be lowered time and time again so that a large chunk of students don't flunk.It is the same now with teachers,who have sicced the NEA on school districts across the country that try and administer proficiency tests to make sure students are being serviced by competent teachers.If public school students of today had to meet the criteria of 70-80 years ago it is very unlikely that most would be able to do it.What does it say that 3/4 of Harvard students now graduate with 'honors'or that you now automatically get points on the SAT test for merely signing your name?Mckibben hints that we've had to dumb down our educational standards precisely because tv has to some degree impaired the learning process of the young,specifically in the areas of attention span and grasping concepts that haven't been sufficiently Sesame Streetized(dumbed down).

For Mckibben,and I have to agree wholeheartedly with him,the greatest danger our nation,civilization and Democracy faces is the coming generations that have been marginally educated and have no concept of how our nation and Democracy was brought about and maintained.If the populace of the future is made up mostly of ignorant,ahistorical,consumer drones with no concept of how a civilization is made possible and what it takes in order to maintain the precious gains of civilization then aren't we looking into the abyss?If the curiosity,wonder and meaningful dialogue and understanding that makes the continuation of a viable society possible is buried under the shallow,banal,couch-potatoed,freeze-dried spectacle that is consumerist culture and the culture of ignorance that tv can't help but foster,then what are the chances that such a society and populace can survive and thrive?

If you became stranded in the wilderness could you build a fire without the aid of matches or a lighter? If your car breaks down can you fix it? Could you build a house or even a cabin? Do you have the necessary knowledge to grow a garden or recognize the difference between Nightshade and Snake Root? Fifty years ago the capacities required to carry out these tasks was common for many, but in today's age of technology many of the information required to carry out these tasks is considered by many to be nothing more than outmoded folk-knowledge, as trivia of a time long past.
However, the bits of knowledge that are required to carry out these ostensibly simple activities, McKibben argues, represent just a sampling of the vast storehouse of knowledge that humans, particularly those in industrial societies, have been losing since the advent of television and the dawning of what has become known as "the age of information."

In this enlightening book McKibben examines whether this "age of information" is indeed a manifest feature of modern society and calls into question whether or not that which is transmited to us through television is useful information at all. In an attempt to answer this difficult question he carries out a substantial experiment whereby he compares a full day of cable television programming-all 24 hours of all 93 channels-in Fairfax, Virginia, to 24 hours spent camping alone atop a mountain in the Adriondacks.

In so doing McKibben illustrates the considerable limitations of the media as a conduit for useful information, which is, paradoxically, a symptom and result of the very feature that makes it so appealing to so many: its seemingly endless variety. The consequences of such an overload of information that tv represents is its implicit resistance to continuity as it represents an endless stream of unconnected and disparate bits of information. This may be a good thing for advertisers and corporations that want you to buy their products or quickly forget the latest scandals, but it is decidedly dysfunctional to the acquisition of useful knowledge, which is precisely the point that Mckibben is trying to make against the conventional wisdom of most. The outcome of this type of hyper-structure has far reaching affects on our society and contributes significantly to the increasing loss of community that has been a feature of America since the late fifties and early sixties. As Mckibben ponts put, the result of this more mobile, individually patterned society has only been achieved at the cost of the corresponding human estrangement from nature and our place within the biospheric community, which as we have seen has serious consequences, not only for Americans, but, for all humanity.

The Age of Missing Information is an important book that calls for the attention of anyone concerned with the disintegrating state of the environment and corollary loss of community that has resulted from this alienation. For those who are concerned about these mounting problems McKibbens book will surely invoke a reevaluation of the image of television in our society and the type of viewer/consumer it openly seeks to create. But, most importantly this book brings attention to the often extreme sacrifices that are made and the high costs of this media addiction.
---Hayduke66

What would you learn if you taped every channel coming into your TV for 24 hours from your cable system. Then review and compare the 2000 hours of video tape to 24 hours of camping on a mountaintop near a pond. What will each one teach you? Bill McKibben does an excellent job of capturing what the real impact is on our thoughts when we watch television. I was impressed by the questions he raised and feel this is an important book.

Bill McKibben has clearly defined what is at stake with our obsession with television. Not unlike the chronic smoker who cannot pull him/her self away from the smoke filled room; our society is mainlining television while the wild world outside (not so gradually) disappears. What we could gain if our choices are different in the future or what we will loose if we choose the status quo, are articulately presented for us in an engaging exchange of opposites. Orginally written as an essay in "The New Yorker" magazine under the title of "What's On?", this book is a must for all parents to non-chalantly give to that son or daughter who just can't seem to pull his or herself away from that all pervading box

I introduce a précis of this book with a bit of trepidation. But here goes: Bill McKibben records 24 hours worth of programming from every single one of Fairfax, Virginia's 93 television stations. Then he watches all of them, eight hours a day, for basically a year. On another day he heads off into the mountains and writes about that. Compare and contrast.

I hesitate because this will give you at least one immediate idea, namely that McKibben is wasting your time or condescending to you, or both. Thankfully McKibben himself was well aware of this possibility, and avoided it studiously. He knew that people would be afraid to read a book with that setup, so he violated most expectations that you could have brought to it.

It's a fun book, profound, and a quick read. If you've read David Foster Wallace's essay "E Unibus Plurum" (collected in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"), you'll have one of the threads, namely a look at TV's involution. In "E Unibus Plurum," Wallace noted that television shows increasingly only referred to other television shows: you don't need to know anything about the culture of the outside world to understand all of the jokes. Wallace, at some level, thought this was cute. He was singularly unwilling to say that television is garbage; instead, he took television to be a great object for scholarly study. McKibben has no problem calling calling out the low quality of most television.

He goes well beyond that, into a lot of thoughts about TV that never would have occurred to me -- certainly not as eloquently as he put them. For instance, television has shrunk history: if it occurred before the era when things could be televised, it might as well not exist. The History Channel makes some exceptions, but they're few and far between. We're expected to know about as far back as the Zapruder video, and that's it.

Or take nature videos. They've done a great deal of good for the environmental movement, but they've convinced people that nature is either a) cute and cuddly, b) so ugly that it wraps back around and becomes cute, or c) red in tooth and claw. Real nature is boring: lions spend most of their time sleeping, not shredding flesh. Television has made it hard for us to appreciate a quiet moment in the woods. McKibben's time on a mountain is an attempt to bring some of that back.

He makes a rather disturbing claim midway through: for all our economic progress, nothing very profound has changed in the lives of Americans in the last 40 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, "People learned to talk across long distances on telephones, to travel easily and routinely. School became standard, even in remote areas. ... Birth control allowed limits on reproduction. Easy refrigeration changed the way we thought about food. ... Medicine eliminated most childhood deaths, and made all lives healthier and more secure."

What are the big life-changing innovations from the 1960's to now? We've been reduced to little technological fixes and excessive convenience: "An ad, endlessly repeated, touts Glassmates, which makes it easier to remove fingerprints on glass and spots on mirrors. "Every day I clean them. *Spray* on the cleaner, *scrub* with one paper towel, *dry* with another. *Three messy steps*," overcome with a single blow -- these are the kind of dragons we have left to slay."

Yet this is what our economic logic forces: companies must grow, even if there's really nothing we need to buy. The stock market demands growth, and growth that exceeds the mere rate of births. The advertising tells you that you need a larger car, more stuff in your house, a smaller, blacker iPod to replace the one you bought a year ago, and Glassmates.

I don't know if McKibben is right that we've reached a point where valuable technological innovation is rare, but it's certainly compelling. In fact, the biggest innovation that's arrived since "Missing Information" is the Internet, and it's not clear that the net fundamentally alters McKibben's story. Certainly there are those of us who believe that the net is a force for great good and great social change, and that it differs fundamentally from television. Really what this book calls for, though, is *silence*. McKibben thinks that we should spend more time building meaningful lives and meaningful communities. That involves unplugging. Whether it's unplugging the TV or the computer seems immaterial to the argument.