This is the first book that openly raises the impossibility of transforming, even reforming, the means of mass communication that has revolutionized our daily life: television.
For Jerry Mander, the corporal and mental damages that television produces, the dangers of social control that it contains and the type of reality that it imposes on us are effects of its characteristics as technology and are so dangerous that it should be eliminated forever. Television is as little "reformable" as are atomic weapons in the hands of any army.
The successes of Mander in his analysis of the central role of television in the acceleration of consumption and its dependence on the market are due to his consideration of technology as an ideology. This does not change despite sophisticated digital innovations or the seduction of interactivity. Based on extensive personal and professional experience, and a careful investigation of the various aspects of the medium, the author combines the analysis of the daily effects of television with warnings about the harmful effects that light abuse can cause us. artificial, the manipulation of images and the always feared control of consciences. The result is a book of denunciation, unique in its kind.