Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Dec 1, 2008 - Social Science - 304 pages
In this utterly original look at our modern "culture of performance," de Zengotita shows how media are creating self-reflective environments, custom made for each of us. From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of mass terror, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from blogs to reality TV to the Weather Channel, Mediated takes us on an original and astonishing tour of every department of our media-saturated society. The implications are personal and far-reaching at the same time.
Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.
"Reading Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend-the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside of your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions."-O magazine
"A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media...."-Washington Post
"Deceptively colloquial, intellectually dense...This provocative, extreme and compelling work is a must-read for philosophers of every stripe."-Publishers Weekly
 

Contents

Learning to Love the Blob
13
The Cult of the Child
33
Twilight of the Heroes
81
Identity Politics
129
Busy Busy
175
The Fate of Nature
209
Jedermensch ein Übermensch
249
Terror
279
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University.

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