Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Were Morphed Into “Progress”

David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way”

“The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation’s roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and “Goody” Pincus, who led the team that invented “the pill”.

The book. And on Audible


The uses and abuses of technology

By the cameras and for the cameras…

Perception, Reality and the Videodrome

“The television screen [or, similarly, Internet ‘entertainment’ programming] has become the retina of the mind’s eye…the battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena, the Videodrome.

“Whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality and reality is less than television. Your reality is already half television… Continue

— Inducing the Double Mind