futurejournalismproject:

The Influencing Machine: A Brief Visual History of the Media

via Brain Pickings:

One of the coolest and most charming book releases of this year, The Influencing Machine is a graphic novel about the media, its history, and its many maladies.

Written by Brooke Gladstone, longtime host of NPR’s excellent On the Media, and illustrated by cartoonist Josh Neufeld, The Influencing Machine takes a refreshingly alternative approach to the age-old issue of why we disparage and distrust the news. 

Gladstone (in the video above):

…what victims of the syndrome have lost: identity. They no longer know who they are. They have shattered themselves into fragments and projected the shameful bits onto the influencing machine. That is my metaphor for how we see the media. We feared the telegraph, the radio, the television, the computer. Heck, Socrates even disdained writing. But I believe the media are mirrors, a mess of mirrors. And what we fear is not the machine, but the reflection. 

FJP: This just made my day! Wonderful, creative, exciting, intelligent, and so true. —Jihii

24 April 2012 ·

• Tags
• history
• journalism