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]
>
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