Of the ideas introduced in the book, “the torrent” is perhaps the most vital. The word itself is an especially apt label to describe the ceaseless stream of visuals and audio that constantly surround and threaten to overwhelm us. On one hand the word “torrent”, when used to refer to media, evokes a slightly comical mental image (a rushing, cascading neon river of Times Square billboards, commercial jingles, and TV screens) but perhaps that’s somewhat appropriate, because I think most of us are at least dimly aware of the effect of the media on our lives, and are able to step back and poke fun at ourselves for being so completely engrossed in it. On the other hand, the concept of “the torrent” is really somewhat horrifying -- a torrent implies a fast-moving, liquid force that sweeps us up and carries us along with it, powerless to swim against the rushing current. Gitlin writes in Chapter 3, “By definition, a torrent is indivisible. ...Any item may look and feel like a trifle -- indeed, that may be its point -- but the onrushing torrent is an enormity. It may seem at times like a cornucopia of delights, or a grotesque wilderness of mirrors, or the humdrum furniture of life, or a waste of time, but one way or the other it requires attention and response.”
Remembering that the torrent is not just there, but also ceaseless and all-consuming is important. It is easy to give a nod to its existence, but then underestimate the vastness and saturation -- “supersaturation,” as Gitlin defines it -- of the media torrent. While reading Media Unlimited on the subway home I looked up and, just for the heck of it, attempted to count the number of images and digital devices I could see from where I was standing. There were the expected subway ads running down the entire length of the car, more ads in the “map spaces,” photocopied flyers stuck over the real ads, and then the things people were holding or carrying: the covers of other books, newspapers, an open magazine with at least four photos on the page, PSP’s and Nintendo DS’s, iPods, Blackberries, not to mention the logos on shirts and shoes and bags...and what if I could go through every purse, backpack and messenger bag to count the images inside? I got dizzy and gave up. In about fifteen seconds, I found more images playing “I Spy” on the subway than the typical seventeenth-century Dutch family would own in a generation.
Another section of Media Unlimited that resonated particularly well with me was Gitlin’s discourse on speed. Gitlin brings up some very valid points here, and not least of all because the speed of the media torrent is perhaps the aspect of it with the most negative reputation. The idea of instant gratification and an ever-quickening pace of production and delivery (for both tangible goods, like a pair of shoes bought online, and intangible goods, like the visual and audio delivered to our eyes and ears while watching TV) is frequently (though not necessarily wrongly) blamed for shortening our attention spans and making us rush breathlessly through everything we do. “Not surprisingly, in the era of television, the term attention span began to be heard -- and worried about,” Gitlin writes on page 110. Our shortening attention spans are something of a cultural phenomenon; A.D.D., attention-deficit-disorder, is not just a legitimately recognized disorder but also a household acronym we throw around, cracking jokes like, “Oh god, I’m so A.D.D. today!” when we can’t focus or get easily distracted. Indeed, MTV even runs a program named “A.D.D. Video” where it shows the popular music videos of the week -- but instead of allowing them to run in full, shows about 30 seconds of each video before abruptly switching to a different video. “For thirty frenzied minutes, A.D.D. Video hits viewers with three turbo-charged chunks of videos, each grouped by theme,” MTV boasts on its website. (Perhaps as a sign of hope that we do still have standards, this incredibly obnoxious half-hour of programming has never achieved much widespread popularity.) But in general, the pace of media continues to steadily roll onward faster and faster, a snowball gathering speed as it hurtles down a mountainside.
“...the prospect of unending, out-of-control acceleration is unnerving. Can all this clutter and haste really be good for us? Some who accept the inevitability of ever-increasing speed wonder whether the acceleration will someday -- perhaps soon -- crash against barriers of nature or psyche. How fast can montage go without leaving perception behind? How much shorter than seven seconds can a sound bite shrink? How much quicker can Internet access get? How much multi-tasking, how many advances in Palm Pilotry, can customers bear? How many channels can we surf more or less simultaneously without going mad?” (pg. 115)
The questions Gitlin asks here are all valid, all questions that we ourselves ask, and all questions without answers. Gitlin does explain the hunger for speed; beyond the rational explanation (“time is money”) is that which we less-readily admit to: people enjoy going fast. “The dirty little secret is that ours is a civilization that revels in the pure experience of speed.” (pg. 105) But simply reaching that realization alone is not enough to answer the question of, "when will enough be enough?" The same goes for the churning media torrent -- how much more saturated and congested can the stream of audio and visual get before we are so overwhelmed by quantity of content that we are unable to decipher anything of significance from it? It seems that only time will tell when, or rather if, we will ever find a stopping point, nevermind a reversal of the madness that is the modern media.
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