How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?
[he goes on to make the point that this does happen, and we might point to the current volcano ash - but the exception proves the rule: mostly it has little effect (except possibly to depress us)]
But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.p69
Thus, we have here a great loop of impotence: the news illicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.p70
Prior to the age of telegraphy, the information-action ratio was sufficiently close so that most people had a sense of being able to control some of the contingencies in their lives. What people knew about had action-value. In the information world created by telegraphy, this sense of potency was lost precisely because the whole world became the context for news. Everything became everyone's business. For the first time we were sent information which answered no question we had asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.
We may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify impotence.
1 comment:
That's a fascinating observation, made only pertinent by the sheer amount of ways available for accessing 'news' today.
It made me wonder what proportion of the stuff I read leads to any difference in my thinking that leads to action, or at least to a different approach to life and its issues.
And the answer is: not a great deal. Surprisingly, even the more ministry-oriented blogs that I subscribe to have little discernible outcomes in my life.
That's quite worrying.
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