Just picked this up at the library today. From How to read a Book by Mortimer J. Alder and Charles Van Doren; [M]edia...are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packiging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines is presented with a whole complex of elements- all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics- to make it easier to make up his own mind with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the package is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes the button and plays back the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 22:50:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015