Media Unlimited Assignment

             The room is dark, the air is moist, yet Michelangelo’s attention is on the dusty, chipped walls of the Sistine Chapel.  As Pope Julius II watches Michelangelo paint the Creation of Adam onto the frescoes, the bells of the church ring (a clear indication that the afternoon mass has begun). People in their cloaks and muddy shoes pass down the aisles and gaze into the captivating and realistically drawn nude images painted up above. In today’s society, people still roam down the aisles of the Sistine Chapel to marvel at Michelangelo’s work. However, no longer does a person have to physically be at a place to enjoy such an experience: technology forms simulations that transcends to our feelings giving us impressions or a sense of reality but not actuality.

             If  Todd Gitlin taught me anything from his book Media Unlimited, the torrent of images and sounds has made humanity subject to a false reality by fictitiously supplying us with fabricated sensations and simulations we (the viewer) consequently deem are real (ultimately baffling so many of us).

             Like a magician to an audience, I was enchanted by Gitlin’s ability to creatively integrate academic and popular sources in a way that felt seamless. However, like all curious spectators at a magic show, Gitlin’s illusions started to make me question numerous things about the media I had not questioned before. Suddenly, I wanted to know who was really serving whom man or the machine; is man serving the “server”?  Is curiosity the food that feeds the mechanical machine we call the media? If so, can we stop what human nature has engraved in us to do at birth: think and explore at freewill? And why do so many of us seek truth in a virtual world that is filled with false doctrines, images, and sounds? I admit I was puzzled… at first.

          The deeper I got into Gitlin’s views on the media and it’s effects on society, the more I started to uncover the secret behind his magic trick. What was Gitlin’s magic? He was able to dazzle me with endless facts that did nothing but state the obvious. Gitlin’s book is a manifestation of what he himself despises the most: information overload that is forever metamorphosing into something else. His anxiousness to get his point across to the reader was not at all pleasing. Obviously, too much of anything is bad; therefore, moderation is key.