Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television is a 1978 book by Jerry Mander, [1] "who argues that many of the problems with television are inherent in the medium and technology itself, and thus cannot be reformed". [2]
Mander was an advertiser for 15 years, with five of them as a president and partner of Freeman, Mander, & Gossage, a San Francisco advertising agency. [3]
This is the first book that collects information from various sources to determine how the wide availability of television affects society. [4] Mander believes that "television and democratic society are incompatible" due to television removing all of society's senses except for seeing and hearing. The author states that television makes it so that people have no common sense which leads to, as Cornell University professor Rose K. Golden wrote for the journal Contemporary Sociology , being "powerless to reject the camera's line of sight, reset the stage, or call on our own sensory apparatus to correct the doctored sights and sounds the machine delivers". [4] Mander's four arguments in the book to eliminate television are that telecommunication removes the sense of reality from people, television promotes capitalism, television can be used as a scapegoat, and that all three of these issues negatively work together. [5]
A 1979 review of the book from The Cambridge Quarterly stated that 99% of American homes had a television with millions of people watching it for several hours per day. Mander stated that television audiences are "either a wanton debasement of values or a towering obstacle to social change" while others have wanted to protest for changes to television programs, its controllers, and its bad effects. The thesis is that "reform is impossible" due to television and that all television should be abolished. The author came to his conclusion while he was working in advertising for 15 years. The book's sources include his own life experience, science fiction, and Zen. [6]
Michael Comber of The Cambridge Quarterly disagreed with Mander's arguments, stating that television has room for multiple ideologies and that "technology need not be viewed as a monolithic ogre, outside our control, incapable of reform, and at best fit for only elimination". However, Comber concluded the review with, "In order to transform television, one must first understand how television works. To this understanding Mander's book makes a useful contribution." [6] Kirkus Reviews wrote, "In the end, the author admits the dominant position of TV in our society and concedes he has no earthly idea of how to bring about its demise. It might be termed an exercise in futility were it not for the intriguing notions it offers." [7]
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a demonstrative scholarly hoax performed by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor, specifically to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies—whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross—[would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."
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Jerry Irwin Mander was an American activist and author in San Francisco, known for his use of advertising for progressive and ecological causes and for his 1978 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television.
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Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis is a 1958 book by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which the author provides a critique of the Ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It received positive reviews, describing it as a convincing discussion of its subject.
Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative is a 1998 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger sets forth a program of "democratic experimentalism" that challenges and defies the neoliberal consensus that there are few alternatives for the progressive reform of democratic and market structures.
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