Ghost 'n' the Machine

Twenty five years after it was published, ", " is still selling. Its author is profiled in this article, which also contains a summary of his book's four main points. Oh what the hell, here they are:



"1. The direct experience of life is routinely crowded out by TV's all-encompassing imagery of living. This in turn becomes the synthetic ideal we try to live up to. "We have given up awareness, information and experience that is not part of television," Mander wrote.



2. Television transforms humans into consumers to meet the demands of the global marketplace. To do so, it shapes viewers' sensibility into a unified state of mind, ready "to confuse human need with the advertiser's need to sell commodities."



3. Television is a mind-numbing instrument producing neuro-physiological responses in its audience — effects that amount "to conditioning for autocratic control." (Go ahead and laugh, but who hasn't remarked on TV's ability to zone us out, or likened TV to a drug?)



4. The technology of television acts to filter out nuance from the information it conveys, inevitably favoring "gross, simplified linear messages and programs," wrote Mander, adding, "Television's highest potential is advertising."



On a lighter note, or perhaps a much more ominous one, somebody on eBay is selling a ghost in a jar, complete with a story of suitable creepiness. Why would anybody buy this? Not to throw it at other people, I hope.