“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism."
"Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with [indulgences]."
"As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists, who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny, “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”
"In 1984, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.”
-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I've been rereading McLuhan, Postman, Huxley, etc.
Manufacturing Consent is the most directly applicable to understanding social media. With at least two updates to the thesis.
#1
The outrage machine is fueled by advertising, right? What's new is the motivating control (choice) moved from the advertiser's intent to the algorithmic recommenders.
#2
Third parties learned to effectively manipulate the algorithmic recommenders. So whereas before the gatekeepers acted as a great filter, third parties are now able to command attention and drive narratives.
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Forgive me for stumbling over my descriptions. I'm just now trying to write out my notions. And I don't think any of this is "new". Just that with the new medium upsetting the old constraints and balances, different parts of the ecosystem are more impactful.
Great video. I’d never heard Postman speak before. Thanks.
There are more videos of him there, including an hour and a half lecture. I suppose that’s ironic, but not very, because NP was open to the idea that computer technology could lead to useful media. He just didn’t get to experience much of it in his lifetime.
Now, we can experience him through it, which is a blessing in this time.
:-)
The purpose of purchaing advertising is to increase sales of the advertised product or service. How does the "outrage machine" lead to increased sales of the products or services being advertised? Do you think many people are actually buying products through advertisements posted in, say, Trump vs. AOC flamewars?
Who has the (most) power in the social media ecosystem? Certainly not the advertisers. Today, the power balance has shifted to the aggregators (h/t Stratechery) and the trolls.
Here's a loaded question that might help explain the new power dynamic: Who are the current targets of dissastified customers? During broadcast era (the time of Manufacturing Consent), people boycotted advertisers and brands. Today, people boycott the aggregators (FAANG) and influencers (aka cancel culture).
Take it one step further. Let's call manipulating the algorithm "trolling" (for lack of a better term). What leverage does anyone have over the trolls? I find it very weird, a la roshambo, that there are no effective checks on their power. As in, how does one protest or boycott a troll farm? Even the aggregators struggle to check the trolls.
It doesn't account for this specific example, the use of outrage as an instrument of social control.
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Although said by one of the Nazi leaders - I don't think it is any less true.
This was not about a totalitarian government burning books.
This was about a population numbing themselves with bright colours, bland affirmation and meaningless feeds of facts. With vacuous, superficial interaction with friends and family through screens. They burned the books themselves, so they didn't have to encounter anything challenging.
"I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not democratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible. ... Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret police, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side."
It's not like we weren't warned.