Marshall McLuhan--Remember him?
"The Media is (sic) the Message" was the wave of the future back then. Including the failure of the verb to agree with its subject. And fragments. And subliteracy on so many levels.
People don't compose messages. Spell-check composes them--or decomposes them. I saw a sign (recently posted) that probably passed by the electronic editor somewhere: "Herring Check--free!" I am curious how that is accomplished.
Our uncritical dependence on the magic servant that lives in our computer or in "the Cloud" somewhere puts me in mind of the fable of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, whose enthusiasm for the tricks he could do with his magic wand nearly got him drowned.
Our uncritical thinking and our increasing reliance on a machine to do everything for us, it seems to me, spell probable trouble for our society. When kids don't learn to count in their heads, but rely on their hand-held for all their math answers, they end up at McD's unable to calculate the finer points of making proper change.
When canned media analysis does our critical political thinking for us, we end up voting in the person who puts the slickest media image out there.
That's where McLuhan comes in. He predicted that with the electronic media--in his day, Television--the viewer relates most effectively with a message that allows him to project onto the screen of his own mind whatever--for him--fills that blank space on the television screen. As the screen lures and entices his attention into itself, a process the psychologists call cathexis takes place. That means that the viewer projects whatever fulfills his own wishes onto a medium that leaves a lot of blank space to be filled in.
Remember the Infiniti ads? When they first came out, you never saw the car. Instead, you only saw wish fulfillment--sweeping vistas, grand travel, style and panache. The Medium was the massage, targeting the pleasure centers and by-passing the critical brain cells that would have warned you, "This is a Sell Job!" By the time the car itself arrived, it was already placed in the minds of the potential buying public as the fulfillment of those emotional yearnings which the previous ads had evoked.
There are similar factors at work in the political arena. Savvy politicos sell atmospherics--cloud-cuckoo dreams--and avoid mentioning the messy, nitty-gritty details; real-life stuff that would spark the critical brain functions and alert the electorate to the existence of reality.
Sweeping vistas, broad generalities, and a "cool" image serve to present the nicely-packaged pol as the trendy purchase of the Century. The "Infiniti" candidate would never commit to any particular solution, but would continue to posture as the "Dream-fulfiller" and the Poster boy for{Insert Your Message Here}.
The ultimate "cool candidate" wouldn't be a Manchurian candidate (obscure reference warning!) because he wouldn't have to come from anywhere in particular. Instead, he would be a blank canvas on which every voter, no matter how diverse his or her personal opinion or preference may be from those views of every other voter, can entertain himself with fond, projected hopes for great things to come; things which were never actually promised.
Maybe it would be wise of us all to relearn how to think with our own brains--instead of relying on the machine?
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