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1
A balanced yet biting critique . . . Gitlin is a savvy guide to our increasingly kinetic times.--San Francisco Chronicle
In this original look at our electronically glutted, speed-addicted world, Todd Gitlin evokes a reality of relentless sensation, instant transition, and nonstop stimulus, which he argues is anything but progress. He shows how all media, all the time fuels celebrity worship, paranoia, and irony, and how attempts to ward off the onrush become occasion for yet more media. Far from bringing about a new information age, Gitlin argues, the digital torrent... more A balanced yet biting critique . . . Gitlin is a savvy guide to our increasingly kinetic times.--San Francisco Chronicle
In this original look at our electronically glutted, speed-addicted world, Todd Gitlin evokes a reality of relentless sensation, instant transition, and nonstop stimulus, which he argues is anything but progress. He shows how all media, all the time fuels celebrity worship, paranoia, and irony, and how attempts to ward off the onrush become occasion for yet more media. Far from bringing about a new information age, Gitlin argues, the digital torrent has fostered a society of disposable emotions and casual commitments, and threatens to make democracy a sideshow. In a new afterword, Gitlin takes measure of the most recent wave of inundation in the form of iPods, blogs, and YouTube.
Both a startling analysis and a charged polemic, Media Unlimited reveals the unending stream of manufactured images and sounds as a defining feature of our civilization and a perverse culmination of Western hopes for freedom. less 
Todd GitlinYes, Williams’s perception launched me on to my own book. After many years of writing about how news is composed, how entertainment is composed, who decides on them and who pays attention to them, I’d been discomfited with the academic habit of thinking everything is a text and thinking of everyone as a graduate student who has nothing to do except interpret texts. When in fact, mostly people are... (Source)
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2
"The most important Marxist cultural theorist after Gramsci, Williams' contributions go well beyond the critical tradition, supplying insights of great significance for cultural sociology today... I have never read Williams without finding something worthwhile, something subtle, some idea of great importance" - Jeffrey C. Alexander, Professor of Sociology, Yale University Celebrating the significant intellectual legacy and enduring influence of Raymond Williams, this exciting collection introduces a whole new generation to his work.
Jim McGuigan reasserts and rebalances Williams'... more "The most important Marxist cultural theorist after Gramsci, Williams' contributions go well beyond the critical tradition, supplying insights of great significance for cultural sociology today... I have never read Williams without finding something worthwhile, something subtle, some idea of great importance" - Jeffrey C. Alexander, Professor of Sociology, Yale University Celebrating the significant intellectual legacy and enduring influence of Raymond Williams, this exciting collection introduces a whole new generation to his work.
Jim McGuigan reasserts and rebalances Williams' reputation within the social sciences by collecting and introducing key pieces of his work. Providing context and clarity he powerfully evokes the major contribution Williams has made to sociology, media and communication and cultural studies. Powerfully asserting the on-going relevance of Williams within our contemporary neoliberal and digital age, the book: Includes texts which have never been anthologised before Situates Williams' work both biographically and historically Provides a comprehensive introduction to Williams' social-scientific work Demonstrates the enduring relevance of cultural materialism.
Original and persuasive this book will be of interest to anyone involved in theoretical and methodological modules within sociology, media and communication studies and cultural studies. less Todd GitlinThis is an inaugural lecture Raymond Williams gave in 1974, when he assumed a professorship in drama at Cambridge University. He’s one of the most fertile minds when it comes to media in the last century. Basically he’s saying that it’s extremely odd, and yet central, to the form of civilization that has evolved, that there’s so much drama. And what he means by drama is not simply normal plays,... (Source)
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3
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein | 3.99
Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. more Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. less Todd GitlinElizabeth Eisenstein made a very audacious claim about the relation between printing and the Reformation, as well as the Renaissance. (Source)
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4
Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.
The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole... more Plato's frontal attack on poetry has always been a problem for sympathetic students, who have often minimized or avoided it. Beginning with the premise that the attack must be taken seriously, Eric Havelock shows that Plato's hostility is explained by the continued domination of the poetic tradition in contemporary Greek thought.
The reason for the dominance of this tradition was technological. In a nonliterate culture, stored experience necessary to cultural stability had to be preserved as poetry in order to be memorized. Plato attacks poets, particularly Homer, as the sole source of Greek moral and technical instruction--Mr. Havelock shows how the Iliad acted as an oral encyclopedia. Under the label of mimesis, Plato condemns the poetic process of emotional identification and the necessity of presenting content as a series of specific images in a continued narrative.
The second part of the book discusses the Platonic Forms as an aspect of an increasingly rational culture. Literate Greece demanded, instead of poetic discourse, a vocabulary and a sentence structure both abstract and explicit in which experience could be described normatively and analytically: in short a language of ethics and science. less Todd GitlinThe Greeks matter because some of them, at least, recognized that they were passing through a change in how people frame the world. In their case, it was the change from the oral to the written, and this is of course the subject of one of the Platonic dialogues, Phaedrus. In it, Socrates declares himself fully aware that human capacities can change, and that as memory is displaced or funnelled... (Source)
Melissa LaneIt’s really only in the century or so before Plato that writing starts to become a widespread technology… if you think about Homer and Hesiod, they’re passed on through an oral tradition…What we find in Plato, explicitly, is tremendous anxiety and concern about the nature of writing. Of course the great paradox is that he’s writing, he’s reflecting on the limits of writing, the challenges of... (Source)
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5
America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state. But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications.In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio,... more America's leading role in today's information revolution may seem simply to reflect its position as the world's dominant economy and most powerful state. But by the early nineteenth century, when the United States was neither a world power nor a primary center of scientific discovery, it was already a leader in communications-in postal service and newspaper publishing, then in development of the telegraph and telephone networks, later in the whole repertoire of mass communications.In this wide-ranging social history of American media, from the first printing press to the early days of radio, Paul Starr shows that the creation of modern communications was as much the result of political choices as of technological invention. With his original historical analysis, Starr examines how the decisions that led to a state-run post office and private monopolies on the telegraph and telephone systems affected a developing society. He illuminates contemporary controversies over freedom of information by exploring such crucial formative issues as freedom of the press, intellectual property, privacy, public access to information, and the shaping of specific technologies and institutions. America's critical choices in these areas, Starr argues, affect the long-run path of development in a society and have had wide social, economic, and even military ramifications. The Creation of the Media not only tells the history of the media in a new way; it puts America and its global influence into a new perspective. less Todd GitlinThis book looks at the historical precedents through a different angle, not through sensibility, what brains are doing, but through institutions. And its main point is that the state has been intimately involved in the evolution of the media from the beginning. It looks in particular at the very homely institution of the post office, which is provided for at the beginning of the American... (Source)
James T HamiltonIt’s a wonderful book, in part because it shows that the founding fathers also confronted this problem of rational ignorance. (Source)
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