Media Unlimited

by Todd Gitlin

My book looks at the media torrent as a huge social phenomenon in itself, namely that what people spend most of their time doing in our civilization is connecting to media. We have more experience of people via electronics than we have of face-to-face contact. I don’t view this with automatic alarm, or as an occasion for fireworks – there are elements that are beneficial, there are elements that are sort of horrific. I can’t pretend to have a particular line on it, except saying, “There it is, we’d better stare at it.”