Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion. Random facts or obscure bits of data and trivia are used either to bolster illusion and give it credibility, or discarded if they interfere with the message.
Chris Hedges • Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
But is there not some truth to claim that reality pales in comparison to the digitally mediated worlds on offer? My most straightforward answer is, of course, no. But viewed from a certain angle, perhaps. As an example, consider the case of someone who has only lived where light pollution obscures all but a few of the brightest stars. Under these c
... See moreL. M. Sacasas • Notes From the Metaverse - By L. M. Sacasas - The Convivial Society
To oversimplify, here’s where we ended up. The Internet really did bring new voices into a national discourse that, for too long, had been controlled by far too narrow a group. But it did not return our democratic culture and modes of thinking to pre-TV logocentrism. The brief renaissance of long blog arguments was short-lived (and, honestly, it wa... See more
Chris Hayes • On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
We are a culture that has been denied, or has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, to separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the gleaming image. Public rhetoric is designed to be comprehensible to a ten-year-old child or an adult with a sixth-grade reading level. Most of us
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