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“Highly personal and original . . . McKibben goes beyond Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message.”
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reviews
Nov 30, 2008
Andrew
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What is radical about this book is the experiment itself, its personal, bodily, i guess almost self-flagellating, akin to the film Super Size Me, method. McKibben watched one day of cable television, all 100 channels, 24 hours a piece; that is, he gorged on about 2400 hours total of America's TV output from a single day in the early 1990s. It took months to view, and included shopping networks, infomercials, and televangelism. Torturous.
Despite this, he manages to make a quaint littl More...
Despite this, he manages to make a quaint littl More...
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Aug 03, 2011
Becky
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Written 20 years ago, this book still strikes a strong chord. I have a love-hate with television myself and know if I find myself in a rut, killing my TV seems to bring instant and (surprisingly?) only fleetingly painful change. McKibbon's conclusion is that having information constantly streamed at us actually makes us less informed because (1) there's no time to reflect and internalize information and (2) it's hard to separate the important from the banal.
Additionally, we isolate ourselves More...
Additionally, we isolate ourselves More...
Aug 05, 2011
Although the book is a bit dated, I think McKibben's argument is still valid - that television has the effect of creating a false reality where the individual viewer is the center of a universe that is completely disconnected from our neighbors and nature. Originally written in 1992 it suffers by not considering the massive changes to media since then, including a narrowing of ownership, the plethora of "reality" shows (he does mention this briefly in anew afterword) and most important
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Feb 18, 2011
Leslie
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We're told we live in the information age. Do we? What kind of information? What kind is left out? What do we do with it? Is it worth having, and does it replace information that would be better worth having? Some of this is dated (the book was published in 1992), but most of the changes (cell phones, the ubiquitousness of personal computers, social networking, ipods, wireless computing, blackberries and text messaging, and so forth--all more recent inventions than we usually remember) don't inv
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Apr 26, 2009
Karen
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I found the premise of this book interesting: the author recorded a day's worth of TV on over 100 channels, watched it all over the course of the next year, and pondered what we could learn about modern American society from it. It had some funny bits and some insightful moments about useless products, lack of community, distancing ourselves from nature even while watching nature documentaries, etc. Overall though I found it suffered from two major flaws:
1) It was published in 1993 More...
1) It was published in 1993 More...
May 31, 2009
Mike
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I kind of gathered what the author was going to say when he laid out his strategy toward the beginning of the book. After plowing through all of the TV examples, sprinkled with tid bits of outside beauty journals, the only conclusion I had in mind is what he led us to. So TV blindly misuses its power to deliver information by sending us mediocre, subpar, and damaging information, instead of useful information. If I had to sit through over 1000 hours of TV first and then spend 24 hours camping
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Apr 04, 2008
Mark
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We have been told multiple times that we live in the age of information, that we are living through an information revolution, that we are taking in more information than any other culture at any other time in the history of the planet. True enough, says McKibben. But what information is it? Is it valuable, sustaining, enriching information or is it something else? The answer would be “something else.”
Published in 1992, the Age of Missing information is McKibben’s exploration of More...
Published in 1992, the Age of Missing information is McKibben’s exploration of More...
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Jul 08, 2010
Patrick
rated it:
Just brilliant.
The only problem is the huge amount of late Eighties/early Nineties cultural references. Given the premise of the book, they're unavoidable, but it can give the book a retro feel at times. Or maybe I'm just ashamed that I caught about 90% of the references, and like McKibben, a disturbingly high percentage of my childhood memories have to do with TV - in my case, the Eighties.
Now I've got the Growing Pains theme song stuck in my head. Grrrr.
The only problem is the huge amount of late Eighties/early Nineties cultural references. Given the premise of the book, they're unavoidable, but it can give the book a retro feel at times. Or maybe I'm just ashamed that I caught about 90% of the references, and like McKibben, a disturbingly high percentage of my childhood memories have to do with TV - in my case, the Eighties.
Now I've got the Growing Pains theme song stuck in my head. Grrrr.
May 10, 2009
Frslater
rated it:
This crazy author coerced 100 of his friends into taping the same 24-hour period on each of the 100 channels in his cable TV subscription. Then he watched ALL of the tapes, simply to compare it to what he learned by spending 24 hours camping by his favorite alpine lake. It's a satisfying read if you hate television.
Oct 17, 2011
Ian
rated it:
I wavered between 4 and 5 stars. The message was spot-on, though perhaps a little gauzy through the haze of nearly 20 years. Still, always a delight to pick up a book and wish you had read it years ago.
Feb 25, 2009
Heather
rated it:
This guy tapes 24 hours of tv on every channel and then spends the next like year watching it all. It's pretty interesting and makes you realize what a sad state of being a lot of people are in.
Aug 07, 2011
Fun but a little dry. Flash to the past with some insight too. Good book for creating a heated debate.
Feb 13, 2009
Callsign222
rated it:
This book is a little dated, as it chronicles TV from the 90's (only 100 stations), but other than that it's basic premise holds true... That we have little to no attention span, our collective memory has been truncated to what TV can show us, and we're all a bunch of suckers. The rest of the world, however, holds lessons and information far above and beyond anything else. I loved this book when I read it way back, and I still love it now.
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Sep 24, 2008
Jeff
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I've been eager to read this book since I heard Bill McKibben speak on Alternative Radio last year. This book is a reflection on his expereince watching the a single day's entire broadcast recorded from every station offered by the largest American cable provider in the late 1980s. I figured I'd read about his experience before spending 7 years doing the same experiment with DirectTV.
Aug 14, 2008
katie
rated it: 
I ILL'ed this book as it came highly recommended to me by a friend, but, when I began reading it, I found it incredibly belabored and fairly dry. I felt like I'd read many books that argued the same thing, and McKibben's outlook did not add much to the knowledge/opinions I'd already developed. I ended up not reading past the third chapter. Too bad, as the premise is intriguing.
Nov 25, 2011
David
rated it:
Bill McKibben makes a case for the idea that time spent alone in the wild actually provides better information than time in front of the tube—information about our bodies, the worth of nature, the passage of time, our own smallness. His claim that television shields and distracts us from some of the information that is most important for us is surprisingly convincing.
Mar 07, 2009
David
rated it:
McKibben got a group of friends to tape all 24 hours of television available on the 103 channels in his area and then he watched every hour. After he recovered from this media deluge, he wrote about his experience and compared it to 24 hours spent far away from a television screen. Fascinating and well-written.
Jun 12, 2007
David
rated it:
McKibben got a group of friends to tape all 24 hours of television available on the 103 channels in his area and then he watched every hour. After he recovered from this media deluge, he wrote about his experience and compared it to 24 hours spent far away from a television screen. Fascinating and well-written.
Dec 30, 2009
This book is just a bit out of date since it was written before the internet became such a media force. With a long reading list, I can't justify sticking with this just for the sake of saying I've read a McKibben book. Any other suggestions from McKibben are most welcome.
Jan 18, 2011
David
rated it:
This was a book that my then-girlfriend/now-fiancee was reading. She lent it to me and I plowed right through it. It's well-written in that it seems to be written for a fast-paced read. It does seem, however, to be a lightweight/beginners book to this type of critique.
Jan 02, 2008
Maggie
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an experiment trying to gain the knowledge of what knowledge is really necessary for us to survive and how do we get it. here's a hint...we don't get it from TV. surprise!!!!
Oct 25, 2007
Ryan
rated it:
What does television do to our understanding of information and how we process our world? Watch enough, like McKibben, and find out.
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