This paper summarizes and analyzes Michael R. Real's 1989 book, Super Media: A Cultural Studies Approach. Real investigates the nature and power of the technological communications revolution, what he terms "super media," the electronically transmitted means of communication which provide global links among individuals. He studies the super media through the culture they create: the shared values, aspirations, ambivalent feelings, and distilled experiences they offer to modern society.
Real begins by considering the prevalence and power of electronic media. He observes, "Today a person must constantly function with information that is from remote sources and [is] not immediately testable" (p. 23). He notes that technological revolutions have made possible the transfer of information much faster and more impersonally than in previous times, expanding the "potential for personal influence" (p. 28) of those with access to the media. He writes, "We construct personal identity within a different context than those who lived in earlier centuries" (p. 30).
Real's choice of dates in Table 1.2 (p. 25) seems arbitrary (and his date of 1976 for the introduction of the telephone is obviously a typographical error; he means 1876). He chooses almost the earliest possible date for television broadcasting, 1923, well before television had begun the broad penetration into homes that exploded just after World War II. Yet he sets the start of radio broadcasting at 1920, eight years after the U.S. Senate's passage of the first Radio Act. However imprecise his dates, his point is that the electronic media revolution happened over a breathtakingly brief time, changing almost overnight the technologies used for the widespread communication of ideas and information. Because electronic media represent such a radical change in communication ability, speed, and details, Real prefers the term "super media."
Real observes that super media a...