Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

This is the first book that collects information from various sources to determine how the wide availability of television affects society. 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". 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. ==Reception==

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." In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman, another notable critic of television, dismissed Mander's arguments as "preposterous notions" and a "straight Luddite position", because "Americans will not shut down any part of their technological apparatus, and to suggest that they do so is to make no suggestion at all". ==See also==