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chrismeyer
Member Since:
20 Dec 2005
Posts:33
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19 Mar 2006 5:18 PM |
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Perhaps not news to many, but I find VH1's coinage of the word "Celebreality" painfully close to the bone in describing U.S. culture. Does the celebrity-media complex rival its military-industrial counterpart in economic impact and political influence?
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HowardRheingold
Member Since:
16 Dec 2005
Posts:22
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21 Mar 2006 6:48 PM |
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The connection is oblique, but I think it's related to a term I coined when I wrote The Virtual Community: "disinfotainment."Calling Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, and Neil Postman -- your memes are multiplying.
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myersk
Member Since:
23 Mar 2006
Posts:3
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23 Mar 2006 7:47 PM |
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Not sure what we are talking about here, but I wanted to mention that the military is trying to become more active in what is called "strategic information operations." The idea is to persuade communities and groups to not be, or not contribute to, threats to the US. This inevitable takes them into public messaging, where one has to be entertaining. So disinfotainment is apt, but it is not always deceptive. A message might simply be an appeal that successfully invokes their own values. Soon there will be an exploratory workshop on memetics, sponsored by DARPA. It is so predictable that they would focus on the approach that is most like AI (reductive, computable, pitched as 'powerful' without a shred of evidence).
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HowardRheingold
Member Since:
16 Dec 2005
Posts:22
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24 Mar 2006 3:24 AM |
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There's the theory that much of the impetus behind the fall of Communism had to do with the growing dissatisfaction of people who could see on teleision that ordinary workers in the non-Communist world were able to afford refrigerators and televisions. The US lost a huge opportunity by not putting 200 helicopters with big American flags on them into relief efforts after the Pakistan earthquake -- a human disaster much larger than Katrina. According to a Stanford grad student I talked to, whose family is in the epicenter area, and who has been back and forth around the relief effort, there were more like 8 helicopters from the US. Total. In other words, don't create fake memes -- create real ones. Refrigerators in workers' living rooms, for all the world to see. Helicopters and Marines with food, medical supplies, and temporary shelter.
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myersk
Member Since:
23 Mar 2006
Posts:3
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24 Mar 2006 4:02 PM |
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My mentor had been one of the rare Americans working in Afghanistan in 1946. He told the story about how the Afghans compared the Russians and Americans whose competition in the country was then centered on doing something about the roads. The Americans were out there month after month taking measurements and writing things down, and people wondered what that was all about. The Russians brought in trucks full of waste oil and sprayed it all over the dusty roads. The Afghans thought that was terrific and figured that they'd get a better deal choosing the Russians. So it is interesting to think that, in certain circumstances, the Russians could create better theater than the Americans, and the Afghans didn't feel that it was fake, though they still didn't trust anybody.
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HowardRheingold
Member Since:
16 Dec 2005
Posts:22
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25 Mar 2006 12:21 AM |
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Ha! Good one. (What do I call you, myersk?)
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myersk
Member Since:
23 Mar 2006
Posts:3
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25 Mar 2006 2:37 AM |
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K for Kent. I used to be a futurist (1974-78). Maybe I can again. I'm wondering whether FutureMonitor is the means. It seems possible, but I'm wondering whether some additional structures may be helpful, plus some impersonal content (such as Financial Times might contribute). But of course the completely open discussion can be good, and what one actually learns from. I'll give Chris some ideas, when the time comes. (Just finished watching NOW on PBS. Always a downer on Friday night.) Anyway, I am interested in how US military/intelligence/state dept can effectively influence the communities that are in play. I think Lakoff has a handle on the theory (much superior to what I'm seeing from the meme promoters) and seems to be proving that it works on a continuing basis for US partisan conflict. The celeb-tainment part seems to be important in the attention phase of a persuasion cycle. SOme of my colleagues have done some work putting kids coloring books together for Iraqis. That sort of thing.
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HowardRheingold
Member Since:
16 Dec 2005
Posts:22
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25 Mar 2006 6:17 AM |
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I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Kent. Who else is out there? Step right into it!
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chrismeyer
Member Since:
20 Dec 2005
Posts:33
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26 Mar 2006 2:06 PM |
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Antonio Damasio (neurologist and author of Descartes' Error told me that the Soviet Union fell because the society systematically deprived its members of everything that provides physiologically positive responses, creating a world of negative reinforcement in which positive motivation cannot exist. He (with his colleague and wife Hanna) has just moved to USC to create an institute to study the brain, creativity, and behavior, which will apply neurological findings to problem solving in social situations including business; their research should have implications for how "soft power" can be best exercised. No accident that this should occur at the epicenter of the Hollywood community, and a waste that US political and military leadership would rather buy good press than earn it--Kent's helicopters are a great idea.
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