Closely associated with fragmentation and, in fact, a necessary element in its operation, is immediacy. This here-and-now-quality helps increase the manipulatory power of the informational system. That the information is evanescent. with hardly any enduring structure, also undermines understanding. Still, instantaneousness--the reporting of events as soon after their occurrence as possible--is one of the most revered principles of American journalism. Those social systems that do not provide instantaneous information are regarded either as hopelessly backward and inefficient or a much more serious charge--as socially delinquent.
But speed of delivery is hardly a virtue in itself. In America, the competitive system transforms news events into commodities, and advantage can be realized by being the first to acquire and dispose of this perishable commodity, the news. The case of Jack Anderson, a highly successful columnist with many well-publicized news coups to his credit, is illustrative. He could not resist going on the air with undocumented charges against Thomas Eagleton, who was fighting to remain on the 1972 Democratic ticket as the candidate for Vice-President. Confronted with the inaccuracy of his information, after maximum damage had been done to Eagleton, Anderson. apologized by blaming "the competitive situation." If he hadn't jumped the gun, someone else would have beaten him to it.
Utilizing modem electronics and propelled by competitive drives, information dissemination in the United States and other Western societies is carried on most of the time in an atmosphere of pressure and tension. When there is a. genuine or even a pseudo crisis, a hysterical and frenzied atmosphere totally unconducive to reason is created. The false sense of urgency generated by the insistence on immediacy tends to inflate, and subsequently deflate, the importance of all subject matter (not to mention the already inflated egos of celebrity media personnel, notably anchors, program hosts, etc.). Consequently, the ability to sort out different degrees of significance is impaired. The rapid fire announcement of a plane crash, a rebel offensive in El Salvador, a local embezzlement, a strike, various instances of muggings, rapes, random violence and similar cases of social calamities, defies assessment an judgment. This being so, the mental sorting-out process that would ordinarily assist in creating meaning is abandoned. The mind becomes a sieve, through which dozens of announcements, a few important but most insignificant, are poured almost hourly. Information, rather than helping to focus awareness and create meaning, results instead in a subliminal recognition of inability to deal with the waves of events that keep breaking against one's consciousness, which in self defense must continuously lower its threshold of sensitivity.
In New York City, for example, the next day's newspapers are available at 10:30 p.m. The importance of tomorrow's newspaper is that it makes perishable what happened today. Having disposed of today, life moves on to the next cluster of unrelated episodes. Yet most events of significance mature over a considerable period of time. Understanding these developments is not facilitated by 90-second news flashes relayed by space satellites. Total preoccupation with the moment destroys necessary links with the past.
The technology that permits and facilitates immediacy of information is not at issue. It exists and could, under different conditions, be useful. What is of concern is the present social system's utilization of the techniques of rapid communications delivery to blur or eradicate meaning while claiming that such speed enhances understanding and enlightenment. The corporate. economy misapplies the techniques of modem communication. As presently emptied, communication technologies transmit ahistorical and, therefore, anti-informational messages.
It is easy to imagine electronic formats that would use instantaneousness as a supplement to the construction of meaningful contexts. It is not so easy to believe that immediacy as a manipulative device, will be abandoned while it serves mind managers by effectively preventing popular comprehension--and hence liberating action.
This article appears on The Greanville Post, in the section on Communications.
Notes
1. Freedom is commonly defined in the U.S. and much of the capitalist bloc as an absence of formal restraints or prohibitions blocking the individual's will to do as he or she pleases. This definition is, however, myopic. It can be easily shown that the theoretical right to the enioyment of a particular freedom remains utterly meaningless unless accompanied by the corresponding capability to exercise it. Black citizens have been assured for many decades by the Constitution of their right to vote, but it became necessary to pass special civil rights legislation and programs in order to fulfill the promise. Heavy political, racial, and economic obstacles had to be removed or neutralized, and the struggle even today is by no means complete. Similarly, while, as the saying goes, "both rich and poor are 'free' to sleep under the bridges," only one economic class is likely without the money to do so. And finally what about the freadam to choose if the choices are spurious or nonexistent? The American system is particularly well-endowed with this kind of illusion--from political parties to television programs to cigarette brands or even entire job categories.
2. In his classic study, The Pursuit of Loneliness (Beacon, 1970), Philip Slater has this to say on the subject, "Most people in most societies have been born into and died in stable communities in which the subordination of the individual to the welfare of the group was taken for granted, while the aggrandizement of the individual at the expense of his fellows was simply a crime. This is not to say that competition is an American invention ... [but) our society lies near or on the competitive extreme, and although it contains cooperative institutions I think it is fair to say that Americans suffer from their relative weakness and peripherality. [ .. I It is easy to produce examples of the many ways in which Americans attempt to minimize, circumvent, or deny the interdependence upon which all human societies are based. We seek a private house, a private means of transportation, a private garden, a private laundry, self-service stores, and do-it-yourself skills of every kind. An enormous technology seems to have set itself the task of making it unnecessary fro one human being ever to ask anything of another in the course of going about his daily business. Even within the family Americans are unique in their feeling that each member should have a separate room, and even a separate telephone, television, and car, when economically possible. We seek more and more privacy, and feel more and more alienated and lonely when we get it."
3. As mentioned above, consider for a moment the quality of choice offered by the so-called two-party system in the United States, where both Democrats and Republicans stand, small differences aside, for essentially the same class, that of the big property owners; one system, the capitalist; and one narrow set of basic policies designed to protect the status quo from true challenges.
______________________
BOOKS BY HERBERT I. SCHILLER
Mind Managers (1972).
Mass Communications and American Empire
The Ideology of International Communications (Monograph Series / Institute for Media Analysis, Inc, No. 4)
Mass Communications and American Empire (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)
Super-state; readings in the military-industrial complex
Communication and Cultural Domination (1976)
Living in the Number One Country : Reflections from a Critic of American Empire (1981)
Information and the Crisis Economy (1984)
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
