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Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

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Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#21

Post by lukifer »

Jun8 wrote: post #15
niels_olson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the secret powers that may be I think this is a concept inserted by a lot of Chomsky nay-sayers. I don't recall that being part of the worldview. My limited reading and viewing has left me with the impression, perhaps more disturbing, that there is no secret power. This really is just how people behave, and to really understand what's happening in real time, so that better interventions can be made, is going to tak…

Although I cannot site specific examples from Chomsky right now (wish I had books other than programmin ones at work, but it may freak out my colleagues) I find that belief in a "secret coalition" is as common in the left as it is in the right. This is understandable, because people don't want to believe the alternate (and, I think, much more correct) idea that you have mentioned, i.e. "This really is just how people…

There is an inclination for those suspicious of mass media to believe in a shadow government, etc, pulling the strings of social control. The reality is more disturbing: for the most part, so-called elites conduct their business completely openly, shouting their intentions from the mountaintops, albeit sometimes masked in code, or through narrative framing.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#22

Post by Alex3917 »

jacquesm wrote: post #3

Chomsky is one of the most eloquent people that I've ever come across. Manufacturing consent and Understanding power are indeed life changing books. They are in the sense that after reading them you will look at the media and politics in a new way and that that way will never leave you. It's like putting on glasses when you didn't know you needed them.

Is there any updated source for the statistics he gives in the first couple chapters? They are about 30 years out of date now, so the book is much less useful from that perspective. The Wikipedia page on media consolidation isn't very detailed, nor do I know of any updates sources for the military/pentagon propaganda budget.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#23

Post by jacquesm »

Jun8 wrote: post #15
niels_olson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the secret powers that may be I think this is a concept inserted by a lot of Chomsky nay-sayers. I don't recall that being part of the worldview. My limited reading and viewing has left me with the impression, perhaps more disturbing, that there is no secret power. This really is just how people behave, and to really understand what's happening in real time, so that better interventions can be made, is going to tak…

Although I cannot site specific examples from Chomsky right now (wish I had books other than programmin ones at work, but it may freak out my colleagues) I find that belief in a "secret coalition" is as common in the left as it is in the right. This is understandable, because people don't want to believe the alternate (and, I think, much more correct) idea that you have mentioned, i.e. "This really is just how people…

To some extent I would find a shadowy conspiracy more comforting than what I perceive to be the truth: That plenty of intelligent people do considerable damage to the world without it being their intention. At least a shadowy conspiracy sounds like it would be relatively easy to fix.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#24

Post by neilk »

Jun8 wrote: post #8
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Chomsky is one of the most eloquent people that I've ever come across. Manufacturing consent and Understanding power are indeed life changing books. They are in the sense that after reading them you will look at the media and politics in a new way and that that way will never leave you. It's like putting on glasses when you didn't know you needed them.

Your glasses analogy is interesting but I think is misleading, in that it assumes there's a correct way to view things. This approach is one of the major problems I have with Chomsky and other writers like him, i.e. "you have been duped by the (mostly US) media, the military-industrial complex, by the secret powers that may be; here is the real truth about matters". Rather than being presented as the truth, these opi…

If you judge Chomsky by his fans, it is easy to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. That's not what he's doing.

He's presenting another view of the world where, even in a free and democratic society, the media has institutional, structural weaknesses that cause it to serve power. To amplify certain messages, and attenuate others.

It's an attempt to explain how a free society could have committed such atrocities as the Vietnam War, and later, gotten suckered into the Iraq War.

I have seen the debate about this shift in my lifetime. In the early 90s, when the Manufacturing Consent movie came out, I was in a journalism program and even interviewed the makers of that film. Many of the other students in my classes found the film bewildering. They quite honestly believed the media were just serving the people in the great engine of democracy.

Nowadays everyone is aware of how badly the media is failing the public. There are satirists who make this point on a literally Daily basis.

Of course, the general public's cynicism is often unsophisticated, and manifests itself as accusations of intentional bias. But there is more and more awareness of how the structure of the media itself affects what gets covered - perhaps because the Internet offers a counterexample.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#26

Post by Yaa101 »

merinid wrote: post #2

The extent to which Chomsky has remained relevant in both political and scientific arenas never ceases to amaze me.

What never cease to amaze me and fascinates me is how people can rationalize away simple concept like:

When the public pays for knowledge to be created, it should be that the public owns the knowledge it paid for, of all people Americans should live this truth.

But no, the majority really thinks that a small elite has the right to usurp this knowledge not paid by them and let the public that paid for it, pay more and more.

Who are guilty here? The oportunists that took the chance to usurp the knowledge, or the public that let it steal from under their nose and let the oportunists be oportunistic?

Who here dares to answer my amazement? I dare you to enter this debate!!

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#27

Post by jacquesm »

neilk wrote: post #24
Jun8 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your glasses analogy is interesting but I think is misleading, in that it assumes there's a correct way to view things. This approach is one of the major problems I have with Chomsky and other writers like him, i.e. "you have been duped by the (mostly US) media, the military-industrial complex, by the secret powers that may be; here is the real truth about matters". Rather than being presented as the truth, these opi…

If you judge Chomsky by his fans, it is easy to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist. That's not what he's doing. He's presenting another view of the world where, even in a free and democratic society, the media has institutional, structural weaknesses that cause it to serve power. To amplify certain messages, and attenuate others. It's an attempt to explain how a free society could have committed such atrocities as…

> Nowadays everyone is aware of how badly the media is failing the public.

I so hope that you are right about that one.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#29

Post by jacquesm »

Alex3917 wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Chomsky is one of the most eloquent people that I've ever come across. Manufacturing consent and Understanding power are indeed life changing books. They are in the sense that after reading them you will look at the media and politics in a new way and that that way will never leave you. It's like putting on glasses when you didn't know you needed them.

Is there any updated source for the statistics he gives in the first couple chapters? They are about 30 years out of date now, so the book is much less useful from that perspective. The Wikipedia page on media consolidation isn't very detailed, nor do I know of any updates sources for the military/pentagon propaganda budget.

I really hate google on some days. More days as of late.

Anyway, if you google "the herman chomsky propaganda model twenty years on" and then click the pdf link you may find what you want.

I can't post the link here because google is so paranoid about being crawled that they obfuscate links to the point where you can't get easily get a link to a pdf without going through the search manually.

Re: Aaron Swartz: The Book That Changed My Life

#30

Post by klochner »

Jun8 wrote: post #8
jacquesm wrote: post #3

Chomsky is one of the most eloquent people that I've ever come across. Manufacturing consent and Understanding power are indeed life changing books. They are in the sense that after reading them you will look at the media and politics in a new way and that that way will never leave you. It's like putting on glasses when you didn't know you needed them.

Your glasses analogy is interesting but I think is misleading, in that it assumes there's a correct way to view things. This approach is one of the major problems I have with Chomsky and other writers like him, i.e. "you have been duped by the (mostly US) media, the military-industrial complex, by the secret powers that may be; here is the real truth about matters". Rather than being presented as the truth, these opi…

Digressing . . . centrifugal force is a non-inertial force.

It's roughly equivalent to being in a car which accelerates quickly so that you feel pressure from the seat on your back. The centrifugal force in this case would be the pseudo force that's propelling you backward with respect to the car.

The seat's force pushing you forward is analogous to centripetal force.

So I would argue it's a full truth with a pedantic asterisk - you can make any force appear by moving the reference frame. The same "force" would be present if you were standing stationary on the sidewalk and the car were accelerating toward you.

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