Global villages
In one of Woody Allen's films (Annie Hall? Manhattan?) people standing in line for a movie overhear some idiot blathering on about the real meaning of Marshall McLuhan's work. In a hilarious moment, McLuhan himself walks up and says to the young man that he is a fool and completely wrong about his philosophy. I am a fool who believes that McLuhan prophetically saw our digital future: life in global villages. We now live in a world that digital media has almost completely fragmented into those villages.
The idea, very generally, was that some kinds of media do not unite us, but divide us...a kind of relentless social specializing force. An example many of us have noted:
Almost everyone comments on the fact that cable TV has 1000 channels of pure crap, and they are amazed that sometimes there is nothing of general interest worth watching. So what are all those channels doing? Niche marketing. Currently the world of Philistine, dumb ass high school drop outs has several cable channels providing them with 24/7 gun-toting, duck quacking, Fox-aganda bull shit. They and their families can live THEIR ENTIRE LIVES without seeing or hearing anything other than a terrifyingly narrow POV. Similarly, digital villages of people can live a uni-lateral life of conservative religion, pornography, cooking, and/or militaria digitally via cable TV, and the internet sites (types of media, BTW that are in the process of merging seamlessly.
Religionists are still busy creating their virtual worlds of news, music, sport, and even weather (the apocalypse IS coming, ya know...!!). One can live virtually without ever dealing in facts, science, logic, or reason 24/7. As soon as we got RT and Al Jezeera, suddenly JLTV appeared. On wonders when the Neo-Nazi channel will appear, with old Riefenstahl footage and craft suggestions for using human hair. The insanity just keeps oozing out of ever-bigger TVs. Of course, none of this is kept from children; as usual, only sex is kept hidden and can only be unlocked by good old American money. I suppose the Prostitute Life Network would be untenable because it would not discriminate against any particular group and practice hatred of other humans.
I hear the voices: Media are merely fulfilling the needs of people -- they are merely responding to free market forces. Bullshit. They are making money off stupidity....an activity that transcends all media. I hear others saying that villages of hate have always existed on the planet...witness Belfast and Kosovo. Yet there is an unsettling difference. Propaganda in an older era used to take loudspeakers and leaflets; now the stream is digitally instantaneous, the village is in your phone, on your computer. The computer term "virtual world" IS "global village."
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