The Side-effects. The objective of my project is to look at the mediums of mass communication and mass media on the world today. I am exploring the effects they have on us and ultimately how it has created a world in which we no longer interact with the world per se; there is no conversation, but one way communication. Mass media and technological advances have lead to a world in which individual thought has been displaced, and taken over by externally programmed thought. I am looking at the views of the following people primarily: Marshall Mcluhan, Jean Baudrillard. The main concepts that I will be covering are as follows • Global Village – I will be exploring the concept that the world in which we live is that of a village again. Today’s instant communications have all but erased time and space and rendered national boundaries meaningless • Hyper-reality – The concept of hyper-reality refers to the idea that it is no-longer possible, in a media-saturated world, to distinguish between what is real and what is not (what is, in essence, a simulation of “reality”). Hyper-reality, therefore, is a situation in which nothing and everything is “real”; it is a situation in which we have lost the ability to distinguish reality and fiction. • Television – I will explore the side effects of this medium including how it provides an outlet for hyper-reality, how advertising effects the world and how it has lead to a desire for instant gratification, an emphasis on personal experience and a de-emphasis on acceptance of responsibilities Sources: Marshall Mcluhan and Bruce Powers: The global village, Jerry Mander: Four arguments for the elimination of television, Jean Baudrillard, System of objects, Marshall Mcluhan and Questin Fiore: The medium is the message, Adorno: The culture industry, Jean Baudrillard: The ecstasy of communication, Jean Baudrillard: Simulaca and simulation, Jean Baudrillard: Simulations, Paul Virilio: Open Sky, Marshall Mcluhan: Understanding Media: the extension of Man, John Fiske: Power play power works, Jean Baubrillard: Seduction, Douglas Kellner: Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Post Modernism and Beyond, Marshall Mcluhan: Mechanical Bride Daniel Joseph, Boorstin: The Republic of Technology: Reflections on Our Future Community, Jerry Mander: In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, Nick Stevenson: Understanding media cultures : social theory and mass communication
Category: 2004
Religion as a particular system of faith or worship. A system of beliefs. A belief in a higher power, a belief in spirits, Mana, Darshan. A development from primitive culture. A direct relationship with God, or with an unseen higher power. George Bataille, Theory of Religion. A destruction of the world of immanence, a destruction of the vague intimacy of man. The creation of tools, the turning of everything, man, animal and tool in to a thing. The thing, a symbol of duration, of utility, of productivity, that which destroys intimacy and immanence. The Sacrifice, is the only way to restore things to the realm of the sacred, make a thing no longer a thing, to return it to what it once was “The thing – only the thing – is what sacrifice means to destroy in the victim.” The Festival is that which offers a release from the problem of being human, it is not the perfect solution, but it is the only one. It allows man to break free, but only as free as his consciousness deems useful. Intoxication, Drugs, Alcohol, Raves, Clubbing. Various forms of release in our society, ways which match the Bataillean idea of festival as being the only way for man to get in touch with his lost self, a return to immanence. All these things are depicted in the work of the contemporary author Irvine Welsh, as he describes the exploits of his characters in working class Edinburgh, whether they are on psychoactive drugs, or in the lost world of heroin.