Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Kids (Oh My!)

From:	Toto

  There are philosophies and spiritualities which proffer the view of
"man as a machine," in which our actions can be seen as much more
"mechanical" than most of us would care to admit.
  Of course, the obvious fallacy of this view is shown by the fact
that, were it true, our attitudes and actions would be controlled
by advertising and ten-second sound-bytes yanking at our emotions, 
rather than by the reason and logic that so clearly dominates our
society, as can be demonstrated with one's index finger and a
TV remote-control unit.
................................


Technology is a display of the heights of human creativity and
inventiveness.  The end-users are often a display of the depths, and a
presentation of the fact that even though endowed with intelligence and
inalienable rights, an  individual must participate in the process of
their own existence, investing personal effort into determining its
quality or else suffering the consequences of mental stagnation and &
psychological degeneracy.

   ..
Blanc

Blanc Weber wrote:

> Technology is a display of the heights of human creativity and
> inventiveness.  The end-users are often a display of the depths, and a
> presentation of the fact that even though endowed with intelligence and
> inalienable rights, an  individual must participate in the process of
> their own existence, investing personal effort into determining its
> quality or else suffering the consequences of mental stagnation and &
> psychological degeneracy.

"an  individual must participate in the process of their own existence"

  You have perceptively pinpointed the major downfall of TV as a medium
which has a potential capacity to expand the horizons of those whose
lives it influences.
  The fact that it indeed takes little "personal effort" to
'participate'
in the flow of information coming from the medium leaves the viewer open
to external manipulation of what they come to see as 'their' thoughts,
'their' emotions, and 'their' views.
  Once government experienced the 'runaway train' of Vietnam
war-coverage,
which exposed the true power of free access to information being a nadir
point of vulnerability to the powers-that-be, then they adjusted their
approach to media/information accordingly. Operation Desert Storm is a
prime example of this. They now herd broadcast media into their pens
and count on them to bring the rest of the populace into the fold.

  The ascencion of WebTV, or whatever form the new interactive media
takes, will remain a battleground for both government and corporate
interests, with individuals and various groups/factions of individuals
struggling to force the main players into maintaining some form of
options for those who genuinely wish to preserve their privacy and
freedom, including freedom from being spoon-fed their reality by
the major-players.
  If the future InterNet/WWW/TV configuration is allowed to become
nothing more than another pawn in the designs of the rich and 
powerful, then the best that mankind, as a whole, can hope for, is
to become 'interactive sheep'.
-- 
Toto
"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"
http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html