Re: <nettime> Phil Agre: Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Soc...

[Newmedia@aol.com]

Nettime:
 
> Citizens would grow up accustomed to having a public voice, to
> receiving intellectual responses from others, and to articipating in
> a global intellectual culture. The cultural conditions of democratic
> intellectual life will have been achieved.
 
Sorry (to Phil Agre) but this is nonsense.

There is no "public." There is no "global intellectual culture." There
are no "citizens (of the world)." There is no "democracy." There are
no "morals."
 
All we have is a *technological* environment -- which is in MASSIVE  
transition from one based on television (i.e. the one that invented all these  
20th century *memes*) to one based on *digital* technology.
 
Television has *satellites* that BEAM the same "propaganda" to  everyone.  
The Internet does not.
 
As a result, MEMES don't work any more!  (Sorry, Kalle, you can't  
"advertise" your way to a revolution anymore.)
 
Yes, people were still talking that way back in 2001 when this essay was  
published.
 
Now we (should) know better . . . !!
 
Mark Stahlman
Brooklyn NY



In a message dated 9/20/2013 11:17:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
nettime@kein.org writes:

<  http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/intellectual.html >

Supporting the Intellectual Life of a Democratic Society


<...>



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