Extra Credit-The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben

EXTRA CREDIT
The Age of Missing information by Bill McKibben

In our society information is available to most people twenty-four hours a day, whether we want it or not. Be it newspapers, magazines, the internet, or television, it’s in your face all the time. We are told that the world is now a smaller place because it’s so easy to see what’s going on anywhere in the world…almost. But are we really “informed”? Does knowing the current celebrity gossip make us any smarter? Do sitcoms like “The Brady Bunch” or “I Love Lucy” enlighten us at all? What about the news? We receive raw information from across the globe, but unless we experience something firsthand, how can we really know?
In The Age of Missing Information, Bill McKibben tells the reader of his critical analysis of television, and also his spiritual time spent in the wilderness near his home. He is bombarded with commercial propaganda, news, and entertainment on the television. The overwhelming amount of information he receives requires almost no effort to obtain except to remain conscious. In contrast to watching twenty-four hours of television from each local channel, McKibben delves into nature for twenty-four hours. The insights he gives to his experience in the wilderness are far less frequent than the endless facts he receives from TV, but deeper and more insightful. He uses nature to convey a message of simplicity to the reader, of a deeper understanding of life. McKibben tells us that in today’s world of endless information at our fingertips, we are still not truly informed. Enlightenment occurs at a more personal level than can be attained from mass media.
Early in the book, McKibben writes about the Travel Channel. It is there to feed our natural curiosity about foreign places, and indeed it does show us a glimpse of other cultures. But what we receive is information, not firsthand experience. We are absorbed in it while we watch, but when the tube goes off, has what we “learned” changed anything in our lives? He writes (page 44): “We’re starved for impressions, curious about how people live their lives that don’t inhabit the great suburban sameness. As long as we stay in the big beachfront hotels all we can see is how we live our lives, though more luxuriously and probably with more liquor. But we’re so used to this life it’s hard and scary for most people to surrender it even for a day or two.” He explains that at some level we want to live like people of other cultures, but never quite make it past the virtual reality of the Travel Channel. This concept also reminds me of something we talked about in class. When people watch television they simultaneously feel restless and glued to the screen. Maybe people watch channels like Travel and Discovery because they feel anxious in their own lives to have cultural experiences, but are held back by different constraints (money, health, time, etc).

Television is essentially a business, a money maker. Therefore, it targets it’s viewers to make them feel important, valued, and unique. The varieties of channels themselves show us that TV aims to strike an interest in everyone. From sitcoms to cartoons to the discovery channel, anyone can find something mildly entertaining. That’s the trap. TV acts as if it’s speaking to you personally. By contrast, nature is everywhere, with no intentions of catering to anyone. In nature there is astounding beauty, but you must seek it yourself. McKibben writes (page 228): “Human beings--any one of us, and our species as a whole—are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature…” Nature teaches us to forget about ourselves just for a moment. It shows us the complexity of all life forms. When I did my own McKibben-like experiment for class (spent a half hour outside as well as a half hour in front of a TV show) I found that I learned more about myself when I was outside. I had some peaceful time to contemplate my own thoughts and how I wanted to conduct my day and even my life as a whole while I sat outside. When I was in front of the TV, I was half focused on the show and half focused on thinking about personal, unrelated things.
Knowledge must be obtained through personal observation and reflection, and when it is attained it is more precious, simply because it was sought out, not brought to your living room at the press of a button. McKibben’s arguments are both valid and relevant to our society today, particularly in the “West”. He addresses issues of the environment, humanities, and psychology in a tasteful and intriguing manner. The knowledge and motivation to do so will have to come from wisdom attained through personal observation and reflection of the real world. McKibben’s study is focused only on television, and was written several years ago when internet wasn’t as big a source of information and networking. I would have to take a more moderate stand and say that media has its good and bad effects. In terms of communication, modern media can be extremely useful. Capitalist advertising and corporate-owned news programs are a problem. Since media inherently has mixed effects on people, media literacy skills are the key to using media to our advantage in activism/advocacy work.