The book The Perfect Machine, is an analyzation of the role that television plays in contemporary western culture, with particular emphasis on television in the United States. In addition, the book attempts to bring a closer picture to the reader as to the effectual relationships between television and global attitudes about contemporary culture.
Certainly, since the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945, the attitude about war, peace, and security has inexorably changed. One need only view films like The Atomic Cafe to realize just how much the specter of "the bomb" impacts on society at large. In the same vein, it is obvious that the fear of nuclear war has left a vital mark on the perceptions that society has about life, the enemy, and preparation for another war.1
For Joyce Nelson, the medium of television and its dissemination of the information and attitudes is the exact message. The media links itself to personal perceptions about the world, and often provides quick, packaged, and synthesized material for the individual to consume.
1 See, for example, Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, (New York: Pantheon Press, 1985).
Television, in fact, has become something that contemporary culture relies heavily upon for the message, and little occurs in the way of interpretation.2
In basic terms, Nelson's argument is that television as a medium of communication has been manipulated in order to provide a rather propagandistic message for society. For instance, the anti communist hysteria fueled in the late 1940s and 1950s used television to bring real fear of subversion into the homes of Americans. Observers at the time even commented that the atmosphere allowed the medium of television to be formulated and propelled in a way that lacked even the basic semblance of factual journalism.3
Television also allows fiction to be promulgated as fact, and, in the guise of entertainment, sets basic cultural and societal...