The Responsive Chord: How media manipulate you: what you buy... who you vote for... and how you think.

In 1973, when the first edition of this extremely important, indeed revolutionary book arrived, society was in the midst of a great division between a complacent, staid population and a counter-cultural rebellion of youth, who were questioning authority and social norms. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was begetting additional uprisings among women and LGBTQ communities. The War in Vietnam furthered mistrust of government and mainstream media. Intellectuals were beginning to analyze social conditioning and communication. The Medium is the Message, observed Marshal McLuhan. Tony Schwartz was a sound nerd and student of how advertising — commercial, public service, and political — was most efficient and persuasive among the various forms of communication: radio, television, telephone, and print, foreshadowing the internet. Over the past year and continuing today, we are drowning in a propaganda war of an even greater social division. Because we need to be alert to the forces of conditioning and manipulation by all parties, be it government, media, corporations, or our neighbors, the book has again become significant and germane to walking the tightrope of news and fake news, wisdom and deceit. In merely some 150 pages of concise, easy to understand text, the reader will find a treasury of concepts and examples. Tony Schwartz had a hand in developing the daisy and child political advertisement, aired only once during a prime TV movie, that destroyed the Goldwater Presidential campaign against Lyndon Johnson. It was as effective as Apple's Big Brother and hammer advertisement that also was shown once at the national level during the Super Bowl. We recall emotions and context more than content, and if you are old enough to remember one or both of the mentioned ads, then you can appreciate how they were designed that way. The book also discusses age and ethnic/cultural distinctions and the importance of combined senses in getting and maintaining the message, again forecasting interactive education systems. Personal soundscapes, noise pollution, natural and urban sounds, and the tethering to electronics, already a growing problem, close out the book. Like the equally powerful books by anthropologist Edward T. Hall on how we communicate, dance to speech, and create culturally different limits of space and time, this book should be a basic book in college studies. Reading it should give pause in the deluge of informational noise.

For me, the information in this book is as vital and relevant now as it was when it was published in 1973, for the same reason that the insights shared by Marshall McLuhan in his famous 1969 Playboy Magazine interview are still vital and relevant.I really cannot talk about Tony Schwartz without mentioning Marshall McLuhan. For Schwartz, McLuhan was like what pure science is to applied technology. Schwartz essentially practiced what McLuhan preached and taught others to do the same.Today Marshall McLuhan is mainly known for a statement he made and the title of a book he published in 1967 -- "The Medium Is The Message". It is tragic that so few people understand what he meant by this!Before the Supreme Court decided to lift the ban on corporate spending, I would have chosen "unfortunate" instead of "tragic" to describe the possible impact of this lack of understanding. I also would have chosen "important" rather than "vital" to describe the relevance of the information contained in this book and McLuhan's interview.McLuhan was more interested in enlightening people as regards how electronic media affects us, so we would not be manipulated by it:"The extensions of man's consciousness induced by the electric media could conceivably usher in the millennium, but it also holds the potential for realizing the Anti-Christ -- Yeats' rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Cataclysmic environmental changes such as these are, in and of themselves, morally neutral; it is how we perceive them and react to them that will determine their ultimate psychic and social consequences. If we refuse to see them at all, we will become their servants" (Playboy Magazine 1969).Many might find this and much of what McLuhan said and wrote obscure, fanciful and difficult to understand. Schwartz was a notable exception. This statement from the book under review proves this: "The best political commercials are Rorschach patterns. they do not tell the viewer anything. They surface his feelings and provide a context for him to express these feelings."When Schwartz speaks of "commercials" he is mainly referring to the electronic "medium" itself; the "message" is what is used to "tell" the viewer something.Now take a moment to think about the feelings evoked by the media in the recent Presidential election and also about the extreme animosity many Americans now feel for President Obama. Where do you suppose this comes from?Schwartz used McLuhan's insights and knowledge to revolutionize the advertising business. He participated in developing effective advertising campaigns for hundreds of political candidates, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.Those powerful individuals and corporations who control electronic media, including recorded music, TV, video games and the Internet would like us to continue to believe that the influence of this media is benign or insignificant, when, in fact, as Marshall McLuhan knew and Tony Schwartz proved, the opposite is true! The powers that control the media, to a large extent, determine how we live, think, feel, interact, communicate and vote.For me, this book is not only interesting and worthwhile but essential reading! I believe that, to the extent that one understands the principles shared in it and also in McLuhan's 1969 interview (available for download on the Web), one has more control over his or her future and freedom!