Suburban Landscape 2009


"... I originally titled the book Suburbanization of the Mind, changing it later to Freewayization of the Mind. Both titles were attempts to suggest what was happening to the way that we think and understand information in the television age; our minds were being channeled and simplified to match the channeled and simplified physical environment- suburbs, malls, freeways, high-rise buildings- that also characterized that period (and continues to do so today)... As a result people would become more passive, less able to deal with nuance and complexity, less able to read or create. People would get "dumber", and have less understanding of world events within an exploding information environment... I considered naming it Cloning of the Already Born, in reference to the way television has homogenized culture throughout the world, a tendency not sufficiently noted by the media pundits. Television was engaging all of humanity in similar thought patterns, similar experiences, similar imagery, and a similar context of reality, which was poisonous to diversity of culture. Soon, we would all be more alike, that is, more like Americans living in Holiday Inns."

Jerry Mander
In The Absence of the Sacred
...discussing his previous book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Mander's thoughts were based on the "exploding information environment" that existed in the mid 1970's. Compare that environment to what exists today...