Hofmann told the Guardian: “Desires for media may be comparatively harder to resist because of their high availability and also because it feels like it does not ‘cost much’ to engage in these activities, even though one wants to resist.
From The Guardian (via @nickdenardis)
The new magnetic or world city will be static and iconic or inclusive.
Reversal of the Overheated Medium. Understanding Media.
“Steve Jobs is dead” read the headline on many a news blog last evening. For more than three hours my Twitter stream was filled with quotes, condolences, epiphanies of the frailty of life, and tributes to one the greatest inventors, innovators, and marketers ever to live in this earth. A connected globe of humans mourned this man’s passing in the same instant, connected to each other, united with each other, by way of their media extensions. Millions of people who, even six years ago, would mostly be considered strangers in the others’ minds were instantly family.
The transient nature of these connections is interesting–and probably a deeper topic for another post–and it led to a specific group of people (call them trolls or otherwise) who just could not understand the outpouring of tribute for a man they had never met. “Why,” they asked, “would we mourn someone who made mistakes? Who behaved, sometimes, like a terrible person? Whose life was focused on business?” ¶ Read More…
The drama of the paranoid computer still maintains its tension, though it no longer seems amazing; the beginning with the monkeys is still a fine piece of cinema, but those non-aerodynamic spaceships have long lain in the toybox of our now-grown children, reproduced in plastic (the spaceships, I believe, not our children); the final images are kitsch (a lot of pseudo-philosophical vagueness in which anyone can put the allegory he wants), and the rest is discographic, music and sleeves (p. 145).
“The Multiplication of the Media”. (1983)
Eco, U. (1986). Travels in hyperreality. (W. Weaver, Trans.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company. (Original work published in 1983).
The international media’s response to the Gifford assassination attempt is so telling. America is so self-serving and self-focused that we can’t see that to the rest of the globe our language looks like that of a small child pitching a temper tantrum.
“People in Holland as in the US are concerned about the tone of our debate, the sharper rhetoric, and especially since for the first time TV news anchors are following the Fox [News] style of figures like Bill O’Reilly,” says Peter van Os, a former Washington correspondent for De Groene Amsterdammer who writes on Dutch politics from The Hague. “The phrase ‘angry electorate’ is now used often here … and we are having debates about what Bill Clinton recently called ‘fact free’ news.”
Europeans have paid attention to numerous stories on former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her pro-tea party website that “targets” Giffords and includes the comment “Don’t retreat … reload” – as a symptom of the tone in US politics.
A guest column in the German Der Spiegel today warned that vitriolic attacks against Mrs. Palin from the left were themselves a manifestation of intemperate anger, and warned they could backfire by making her a victim of political elites.
via In Arizona shooting, Europe sees an America gripped by doubt, pessimism – CSMonitor.com.