It happens that the news media often does not report on its own tragedies. At the video link below, it is an example of news, media technology, gone awry. (warning: explicit content)
https://youtu.be/vL-McBl5taQ?si=lwrPbF_nFfDXIAxt
How technology contributes to technopoly. A blog of warning and explanation. Acknowledging and honoring the pioneering work of Neil Postman.
It happens that the news media often does not report on its own tragedies. At the video link below, it is an example of news, media technology, gone awry. (warning: explicit content)
https://youtu.be/vL-McBl5taQ?si=lwrPbF_nFfDXIAxt
The future is beginning to come into better focus with an article in the latest Astronomy magazine.
Researchers are working diligently to solve technical issues with a proposed mini-spacecratf, dubbed StarChip, which will be sent on its way to the nearest star system by blasts of light from an array of lasers here on Earth. While this is still a proposal, recent very small spacecraft called Sprites have been sent into space and at least one Sprite was able to communicate back to earth.
This goes to show that mere mortals can be consumed by deeds of great evil and darkness, yet our better nature still triumphs in individuals of brains and braver character.
Neil Postman, in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, makes a good statement about the belief of the great figures of the legal profession -- men such as John Marshall, Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster -- who saw a danger in democracy, along with its virtues. Says Postman: "They believed that democracy, for all of its obvious virtues, posed the danger of releasing an undisciplined individualism."
Our task as citizens is to re-establish some form of reason as a foundation for our Republic. Certainly, unbridled passions are intolerable, though rigorously disciplined true passion can be a needed accompaniment to intellect.*
*See the list of Fifteen Opposites, broadside by Eli Siegel. Definition Press.
Photo; John Marshall, first Supreme Court Chief Justice
In every country with internet access, platforms have transformed society for the worse. We are running an uncontrolled evolutionary experiment, and the results so far are terrifying.
What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research, which means orienting business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable. The business of business becomes pseudo-therapy; the consumer, a patient reassured by psychodramas.
[Children] have 10 times the amount of screen time they did in 2011....
It happens that the news media often does not report on its own tragedies. At the video link below, it is an example of news, media technol...