Big Media and Us: No More Santa Claus

15 SEP 04 | craum

[craum]

If the Internet disseminates information, then the Blogosphere disseminates knowledge. According to recent events in the Blogosphere, we are at the beginning of a discontinuous shift in the way knowledge is made available to the public.

This shift will be particularly chaotic for events that have the capacity to challenge the way we *think* things run in the world. Any knowledge of such events that lead to a conclusion, other than the one that reported information led us to, will result in varying degrees of social strife and uncertainty. By way of example, the following are fairly isolated blog efforts that attempted to reconcile knowledge with information provided.

Ron Brown's death. http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a1b4ac91e94.htm

and

TWA Flight 800. http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/TWA-Flight-800.html

What if cell phone video and the Internet had existed at the time of Kennedy's assassination? After all these years does anyone still honestly believe one man fired all the shots? Information that dribbled out over years lead to the conclusion that there had to have been other people involved. Any other explanation multiplied the necessary causes beyond reason.

While the Zapruder film was an isolated discontinuity, the knowledge that film provided, along with the other information that was to be made available, was diffused over years. Like the action of a pressure release valve.

Had knowledge of the causes of this event been made available in Internet-time, there would have been great social discontinuity in America. Instead, the event became the continuous stream of American consciousness that we know today. This happened because the technologies of today and their use (Internet/Blogosphere) did not exist. Imagine if they had...

It's one thing for a subset of people to know there's no Santa Claus. It's another thing entirely if everyone discusses it out in the open. Let's face it, our political leaders have always treated us like children. Now we are losing the bliss of common unawareness and society will soon re-align itself to this new reality. Still, the world of knowledge, and therefore quality of life, improved for the common man with the invention of the printing press. Undoubtedly the same will be true for this development.

Chris Raum