Mitchell Stephens, "Thinking 'Above the Stream'"

Will reading be an important activity in the twenty-first century? Will writing? Have technological advances made previous uses of literacy and older value systems obsolete? These are the questions that Mitchell Stephens tackles in his most recent work, The Rise of the Image and the Fall of the Word (1998) . While most reviewers of contemporary culture decry the decline in the reading and writing abilities of the masses and bemoan the influence of television in the average citizen's life, Stephens argues that the potential for human communication is being revolutionized by the expansion of the visual media. Stephens places particular emphasis on the power of what he calls "the new video"-- computer-edited visual essays that are distributed via the Internet--which he believes have the potential "to help resolve [our] crisis of the spirit. Not by taking us back to neighborhoods filled with good conversation, bustling libraries and old-fashioned sincerity. That world is disappearing; it will not return. But by providing the tools -- intellectual and artistic tools -- needed to construct new, more resilient understandings." In "Thinking 'Above the Stream,'" Stephens bids his readers to consider the new literacies that will be necessary for confronting and making sense of the challenges of contemporary life.

Mitchell Stephens is a professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University and the author of the widely used television and radio journalism textbooks, Broadcast News (1980), and A History of News (1988), which has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." Stephens's articles on contemporary thought and the media appear regularly in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Columbia Journalism Review; Stephens has also recorded commentaries for National Public Radio's On the Media and worked for NBC News.

Stephen, Mitchell. "Thinking 'Above the Stream,'" the rise of the image the fall of the word. (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.)
From NPR's On The Media Web site.
Quotation from Mitchell Stephens' The Rise of the Image the Fall of the Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Links to Explore:

"A Journey Around the World:" travel video-essay by Mitchell Stephens, one of five video experiments included on the VIDEO.com site meant to serve as "tentative probes into the future of television and film...based on arguments in the book, the rise of the image the fall of the word"

"The Death of Reading:" 1992 Stephens article for the L.A. Times on the fate of reading in the age of technology.

"The Triumph of the Market:" Mitchell Stephens' commentary on how market values might change teaching and publishing practices in the 21st century. Includes a link to Stephens' video-essay, "In Their Eyes."

Roundtable Discussion of the rise of the image: responses by noted media critics Mark Crispin Miller, David Shenk, and Leslie Savan to Stephens' arguments about the new media.

Questions for Learning:

• With "A Journey Around the World," we get an example of Stephens' own efforts to demonstrate the power that video, delivered via the Internet, has to foster new ways of thinking and communicating. What do you think of the results? Is Stephens' travelogue a compelling document? a persuasive one? Are these the right terms to use in evaluating projects constructed in the "new media"?
  
  
• In "The Death of Reading," Stephens provides the analysis of the decline of the power of the printed word that eventually came to serve as the foundation for his argument in the rise of the image. In this early article, where Stephens is less certain about the positive value of the visual media, he provides an extended account of the reading and viewing habits of the average student. Does his account accurately describe your own relationship to the activities of reading, writing, and viewing? Is he telling a story here that you find familiar or one that is surprising? Can you generate examples to support or contradict Stephens' argument that reading has never been held in a higher regard than at this moment of its waning influence in mind?
  
  
• In "The Triumph of the Market," Stephens responds to the increasing tendency to rely on numbers to measure the success of teachers. This is a quirky piece, one that embodies Stephens sense of the different ways of communicating that are made possible by conjoining visual media and the printed word. Where does he stand, ultimately, on the issue of teacher evaluations? How does his video-essay, "In Their Eyes" explain, extend, illustrate, or complicate the argument he has made in words about teacher evaluations?
  
  
• The response of the media critics to Stephens' book in the Roundtable Discussion of the rise of the image is uniformly negative. What do you make of their objections? Is Mark Crispin Miller correct, for instance, in asserting that "The many wondrous shortcuts now made possible by digital technology, while certainly enabling lots of neat effects, may also help to do the artist in, by disinclining him or her to go through" the hard training that the earlier arts required? And what do you make of this mode of presenting an exchange of views: has Feed magazine found a new way of convey multiple perspectives or is the format itself just a "neat effect" made possible by the technology?
  

Questions for Connecting:

• One might say that Jan Willis shares Mitchell Stephens interest in "thinking above the stream." Like Stephens, she is a student of contemporary culture and of alternate forms of consciousness. As Willis and Stephens describe the evolving ways of experiencing and understanding consciousness, are they describing approaches that lead to the same destination? Does the new video media foster ways of thinking that are consonant with the meditative practices Willis has committed herself to? Are new developments in the West leading back to insights and experiences long known in the East?
  

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