Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett [Hardcover]

Jon Katz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 1997

New electronic technologies are "dumbing down" America. Pop culture creates violent kids with short attention spans. The decline of the print media has made adults politically apathetic. Communicating by computer isolates us and erodes our civic life. The internet, MTV, live cable talk shows, and other multimedia are corroding our society. . . right?

Wrong!! retorts Jon Katz. In his brilliant "take no prisoners" polemic, he explains that if you believe any of the above, you've been swallowing the propaganda expounded by the powers that be, including the likes of William Bennett, Bob Dole, Tipper Gore, and Bill Clinton -- all of whom are keeping us ignorant of the real problems.

This cutting-edge book -- as useful to media-phobes as it is to Webheads -- brings a much needed voice of reason and clarity to the debate over technology's impact on society. It will make its readers rethink everything they've ever been told or read about the interaction between technology, media, and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jon Katz, the media critic for Wired magazine, has written a controversial and much-needed book exploring the "cultural civil war" over values that has developed with the emergence of the new media. Katz stands all sorts of common wisdom on its head. Are the Net, MTV, live cable talk shows, video, and computer games corroding our values? Are new electronic technologies dumbing down our society? Do pop culture, violent computer games, and spending time online create violent kids with short attention spans? Will the Net isolate us and destroy civic ties? Most pundits say "yes" to these questions, but Katz responds with an emphatic "no!" Don't swallow what the doomsday sensationalists are predicting until you read this book.

From Publishers Weekly

The new media, led by the Internet, is weakening the control news outlets such as newspapers and television have over the delivery of information, observes Katz, who argues that in an effort to retain their influence, the old media guard has criticized the new technologies for lowering the standards of journalism and contributing to the breakdown of morality in America. He further claims that by continually criticizing Generation X, the old guard has helped fuel the culture wars in the country and that the established media should not be surprised that few young people read newspapers or watch TV news. But rather than distancing people from information, the new media is giving people a greater chance to make their voices heard, Katz says. It is this plethora of new outlets that scares not only the old media but conservatives like former Education Secretary William Bennett, who charge that the new media is encouraging today's youths to engage in all sorts of illegal and amoral activities such as gang violence and conceiving out-of-wedlock babies. Katz, the media critic for Wired magazine, rejects those arguments and cites a number of other factors contributing to problems of the young, such as one-parent homes, poor schools and the proliferation of drugs and guns. Readers who are already fans of the new media will agree with much of what Katz writes, but it is doubtful that he will convert those who think the new media is the enemy.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (January 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679449132
• ISBN-13: 978-0679449133
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,239,787 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bedlam Farm in upstate New York is where I live, write and tend my animals - four dogs, two donkeys, two barn cats. The rambling old farmhouse was built in 1862; it's surrounded by pastures, streams and wooded hillsides, plus four barns and a milkhouse in various stages of disrepair.

I write books- memoirs, novels, short story collections, and beginning in 2011, children's books. I am also a photographer.

In my former life, before I grew preoccupied with sheepherding and moving manure around. I wanted to change my life and write more about the experience of living with and understanding animals.
I write novels and nonfiction books (I've written 20 books), along with columns and articles for Rolling Stone, Wired, the New York Times, and the website HotWired.
Coming to the farm turned out to be a Joseph Campbell style "Hero's Journey." I went off into some dark places, got divorced, struggled to face myself, and found someone to share my life.

My wife Maria Wulf is an artist, who specializes in fiber art. She works in the Studio Barn across the road from the farmhouse. Earlier this year, I thought briefly of selling Bedlam Farm. After getting married, we decided to stay here. My daughter Emma, a sportswriter living in Brooklyn, has written her own book about New York baseball. I publish a blog I love dearly - www.bedlafarm.com. My photos appear there daily. My dogs are Izzy, Lenore, Frieda and Rose, the working dog who helps me run the farm.

My writing life began with a novel - "Sign Off" - an unwittingly prescient story about the jarring changes in work and security.

This year - 2010 - I am returning to fiction. I've written a novel, "Rose In A Storm," about a border collie stranded on a farm in upstate New York during a terrible storm. I wrote this book in conjunction with some animal behaviorists who helped me enter the mind of a dog, and hopefully, be faithful to that. My first children's book "Meet The Dogs Of Bedlam Farm," will be published by Henry Holt next year. I have just finished a short story collection to be published next year by Villard/Random House.
In recent years, photography has become central to me as well as writing. I have been fortunate enough to have several gallery showings of my work, and also sell my photos as notecards through the Redux Gallery in Dorset, Vt.

I am also working on a book about animal grieving. Hopefully, it will be useful.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is still relevant, January 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett (Hardcover)

I'm a parent of boys 9 and 12. I try to choose which movies they see, but they see the ones on my 'black list' at the neighbors down the street. When my older boy is on the net I wonder what he is looking at (usually it is the 'Hate Hanson' chat group, cheat codes for a computer game, or email to a friend). He likes 'gangsta rap' and I don't know why. I've spent a ton of time working on fatherhood issues and I do everything in my power to be a good parent. I am 50. This book is important because Katz reminds us: 1. the world is complex, more so than is comfortable for us to think, 2. human nature is resilient, more so than we may trust, 3. morality and conscience arise from the quality of day to day (minute by minute?) life in our families and communities, and they will not be undermined by dirty pictures or songs, 4. the modern media, internet and culture provide an incredible vista for our children, both awful and sublime, but an incredible amount of information by any measure. My 'take away' from Katz's book is to trust my children, and myself, in negotiating the new media culture. My job is to help my kid come to terms with the reality of our world, not to try to block it out. As Katz reminds me, it is not going to go away anyhow. This is a good book. I give it a full 5 stars because Katz is such a good writer. Some of Katz's prose jumps off the page.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars passionate, yet sober look at coping with the new media, November 13, 2004

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett (Hardcover)

From the title, you can tell that the author has a bone to pick. However, the book is less about the moral or political debate than about the impact of the "new media". Fortunately, given his credentials as a contributing editor at WIRED, it is not another hack essay full of silly utopian predictions. Instead, it is a thoughtful, provocative, and deliciously sarcastic take on the information revolution and its self-proclaimed critics.

Katz argues that the traditional media, from the NYT to CBS News, are under assault from a wide variety of new into technologies and new formats such as talk radio or Larry King Live. And, he believes, it is presumably Gen X that is taking the lead. The new media are not only democratic but highly interactive, offering anyone with an opinion an opportunity to communicate with millions instantly. There are the principal reasons, Katz believes, that the old-style media are slowly losing ground: their audience will no longer accept elite judgments about what is news and what is not.

This frightens a lot of people, the "mediaphobes". Parents fret that the internet exposes their children to pornography and offers of sex from predatory strangers, satanic cults etc. Katz argues that the attempt to shut down these media is an admission of fear, ignorence and simple laziness. This allows opportunistic demagogues, like the gambling-addicted William Bennett, to blame the media.

It is a great delight to read how Katz demolishes the demagogues calls for techno-restrictions and censorship as attempts to avoid the real issues, which are complex social choices in the end.

Katz' remedies are sober and simple: parents should lighten up and get involved in the new culture and media with their kids. This means rational discussions, negotiation, judicious limit-setting, and basic trust in our children. In this high-tech age, the old-fashioned wisdom of these suggestions is refreshing.

But Katz book offers more than that. Unlike the bland, old-style media he criticizes, his book is passionate rather than dryly "objective" (presenting both sides of view as if each were equally legitimiate, which is such a bore today). Nonetheless, he never goes overboard - he is outraged yet does not need to create political strawmen to trash and blame.

Also, there is a book within a book, looking at Thomas Paine as a new-media man of his age. This was a fascinating analysis that made me want to learn much more about him.

Warmly recommended. This book opened my mind to many new ideas.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An eye opener to those who cling to old media and fear new, April 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Virtuous Reality: How America Surrendered Discussion of Moral Values to Opportunists, Nitwits, and Blockheads Like William Bennett (Hardcover)

In the same style as his Hotwired column Katz puts forth his arguments for the major media transition we're all in. I really enjoyed this book and the straight forward opinions Katz presents. For those who need a fresh outlook on new media this one's an eye opener. For those who embrace new media, it's still worth the read.