“The entire world exists only in order to be televised,” Steven Shaviro writes in “Connected: what it means to live in the network society“. “Today, we are inclined to see nearly everything in terms of connections and networks. The network is the computer, we like to say. We think that intelligence is a distributed, networked… Read More Regulating the Connections Regulating Us
It was Aldous Huxley who, very early, saw sexual decadence combining commercial interests with political manipulation in the emerging media. And he knew what that would mean for a culture. “Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World depicts a culture in which pleasure is compulsory and engineered to eliminate intellectual challenge and to… Read More Aldous Huxley, Sex, and Corporate Psychological Manipulation
BBC: “Did big tech know I was gay before I did? … I was watching a lot of Netflix and I was getting more and more recommendations for series with lesbian storylines, or bi characters. These were TV series that my friends – people of a similar age, with a similar background, and similar streaming… Read More Is Big Tech & Media Coming Out About Shaping Our Perceptions?
Everything is changing. The Medium Is so ubiquitous we often become unaware of it. Which is no small part of the problem. We dwell totally within technological media today and observe it less and less. But (practicing Catholic) Marshall McLuhan saw it clearly and tried to warn us of what was coming — and how… Read More Marshall McLuhan, Prophetic Witness, 1966-7.
Beyond Independent Thought “In the World State in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, embryos are placed in a social class and conditioned to the careers and peers that best meet the needs of the community … we learn about the social class called Epsilon. Bred to Be Unintelligent. The World State produces five distinct social classes named from… Read More Huxley’s Uniform Epsilons
McLuhan, 1969: “There’s nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programing of the sensory life of whole populations. I know it sounds rather science-fictional, but if you understood cybernetics you’d realize we could do it today. The computer could program the media to… Read More Marshall McLuhan on media manipulation of peoples and nations
“Have you ever noticed how television and print media will scream themselves hoarse in news documentaries, editorials and heavy analytical pieces about “rising pornography, crime, violence, gunplay” etc.? And yet in the same TV Guide announcing the latest special on “The Crisis of Sex and Violence in America,” there will appear an advertisement for “Miami… Read More Media Inducing the Double-Mind
Catholic Critique 