Steven:

Exactly!  As it turns out, everything on *television* is "fake" --  
which is to say that, in addition to being "produced" to generate  
particular effects (and paid for by deliberate illusions called  
"advertising"), the underlying technology itself is constructed to  
deceive our senses (i.e. "flicker threshold frequency" &c.)

To be sure, this has always been the case.  So, that raises the  
question of why we are just "noticing" it now . . . ??

This sort of shift in "awareness" implies that something else has  
happened to cause us to "rethink" what has previously been taken for  
granted.  That would implicate some "causal" change for our behaviors  
in terms of "media" and our attitudes about how we get our "news."

As it turns out, that is *exactly* what has happened.  As a result of  
DIGITAL taking over our lives, we have shifted our views about  
TELEVISION.  This isn't the first time that has happened.  It occurred  
to PRINT in the 19th-century and again to various *electric* media in  
the 20th, particularly when RADIO was knocked-off in the 1960s &c.

If "Culture" is a product of communications technologies (as suggested  
by McLuhan), then when those technologies change, so will our culture.  
  This phenomenon is what many call a "counter-culture" clash as one  
media environment fights with another.  This is indeed what we are now  
living through and isn't it fascinating (particularly when you don't  
"take sides") . . . !!

Mark

P.S. Anyone who thinks that the NYTimes or CNN delivers the "truth"  
should have their head examined.  Having been written about and  
contributing to both "print" and "broadcast" media personally for  
decades (hundreds of articles by/about, hundreds of on-air  
appearances), I can tell you that no one who understands how these  
media operate would be confused on these matters.  Knowing many who  
work at these companies, I can tell you that they aren't confused  
about what they are doing.  Many of us have had the opportunity to  
compare our own eye-witness engagement with events with how they are  
reported.  The "truth" is not what is involved, as any honest observer  
figured out a long time ago.

P.P.S.  What Rauch leaves out is that "disinformation" is  
part-and-parcel of "psychological warfare" and that the Cold War --  
which is the context for most people at the Brookings Institution --  
was a psychological war.  This is a sort of warfare that is primarily  
fought against your *own* population -- not your "opponents."  Yes, in  
all this, the "intelligensia" represented by people like Rauch are  
themselves personally complicit and, as the tone of his article  
implies, he seems personally aggrieved that all this would happen to  
him.  That's no surprise, since he is a Yale graduate who became a  
journalist and is now a contributing editor at The Atlantic (as well  
as writing books about "gay marriage" &c.)  We are in a *new* paradigm  
and he is trying to hold up the previous one.  In that, he has already  
failed.

"His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from  
1998 to 2010 in National Journal. Among the many other publications  
for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason,  
Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, U.S. News & World Report, The New  
York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los  
Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher  
Education, The Public Interest, The Advocate, The Daily, and others."

Quoting Steven Quackenbush <[log in to unmask]>:

> Hi TOK listserv,
>
> An article recently published in National Affairs may be of interest to
> this group:
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.nationalaffairs.com_publications_detail_the-2D&d=DwIBaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=UWxc8PTZMS37mXV87gbIsPPx7kcnN4-4ESXN_avRbHg&s=llr62l6K419fQpF8QllBmVhJ3Wjqeu9dm96JIxjoQ5s&e=
> constitution-of-knowledge
>
> Of special note, the author (Jonathan Rauch) observes,
>
>    - "*America has faced many challenges to its political culture, but this
>    is the first time we have seen a national-level epistemic attack: a
>    systematic attack, emanating from the very highest reaches of  
> power, on our
>    collective ability to distinguish truth from falsehood." *(emphasis
>    added)
>
> ~ Steve Q.
>
>
> --
> Steven W. Quackenbush, Ph.D., Chair
> Division of Psychology & Human Development
> University of Maine, Farmington
> Farmington, ME 04938
> (207) 778-7518
> [log in to unmask]
>
> ############################
>
> To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list:
> write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
> or click the following link:
> http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1

############################

To unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1