"..,..lost in the barren urban landscape..,.." The Anarchives Volume 2 Issue 17 The Anarchives Published By The Anarchives The Anarchy Organization The Anarchives tao@lglobal.com Send your e-mail address to get on the list Spread The Word Pass This On... --/\-- The More Information / / \ \ The Less Knowledge ---|--/----\--|--- a quick critique \/ \/ /\______/\ by Nanapush -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ -~ This was a quick critique written in response to an article published by the Kick It Over Collective, then posted onto the Anarchist International News Service . The full article can be accessed via: http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/A-Infos/0166.html and http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/A-Infos/0167.html We've been really busy lately and haven't had much time for writing, but traffic may pick up over the short term. Many ideas and activities are coming to the fore-front. Check out: http://www.lglobal.com/seminar/ http://www.lglobal.com/connect/ We're also in the early stages of forming a media group dedicated towards action, intelligence, and community empowerment in communications. For more info email: media@lglobal.com ================================================================ This article made a number of excellent points, but it was also in it's own way misleading. I need to make a few points in reading... > THE MORE INFORMATION THE LESS KNOWLEDGE > Gary Moffat > > KICK IT OVER summer 1995 > scanned article > > PO Box 5811, Stn A, > Toronto ON > Canada > M5W 1P2 Although i guess the guy's in my city so i should talk to him someday. > Information is the province of the corporate world, > knowledge that of the counter-culture, so it's time we tried > to understand how our knowledge can be used against their > information. This is completely wrong and misleading. Both the mainstream culture, and the counter-culture are primarily information. (going along with Gary's terms). Knowledge evolves from the nature and media of this information. The difference between the two is that the conter-culture is much more ready to share it's knowledge, whereas the mainstream hordes knowledge under the 'holy treasure' of intelectual property. The key isn't understanding knowledge, (another misleading phrase), inherently knowledge is in itself comprehension. The counter-culture needs to continue sharing knowledge. > bly not as rich as it can be through the system."' Computer- > ized information becomes essential to survival in a hierar- > chical system whose workers trust computers more than > each other. However, in a co-operative system whose mem- > bers are more interested in finding ways of working with > their fellows to satisfy mutual needs than in toasting them, a > more holistic approach to knowledge than that provided by > the computer screen is necessary. This holistic approach can be facilitated with the aid of a computer screen. This guy has already begun drawing away from his original concpets of information and knowledge. > Information is usually absorbed by one sense at a > time (usually visually, especially in the computer age); this is wrong Information is increasingly absorbed acousticly not visually. One of the most misleading 'myths' of electronic media is that they are visual. The book and the written word were visual. Electronic media are acoustic/oral. Email is almost a form of speaking. Television is useless without sound-over. (although really television is primarily physical, but that's another story). Visual culture is linear, objective, and static. Oral culture is holistic, subjective, and dynamic. In the visual culture you're removed and a detached observer. In the oral culture you're involved and a direct participant. > Information is sold or hoarded, knowledge is generously > shared among all who seek it. Other way around Gary. (He may have even said the opposite earlier in the paper). > This is why, when the state does > something to harm its people such as going to war, it > must complete the process quickly, before the media > have time to reach them; the US failed to do this when it > invaded Vietnam. What about the Gulf War when the state effectively controlled the media? The maturity of the corporate state since the sixties has enabled the state to not only control media, but also own it. > In prehistoric times there was too little information; the This guy's argument is really getting shakey here. > individual's perception of the world was limited to the ex- > perience of one tribe. The Renaissance had arguably about we are still limited to the experience of one tribe: the tv tribe > the right amount; we now use the term 'Renaissance Man' > to describe somebody knowledgeable in a wide range of > subject areas. The explosion of information created by the > printing press and the nation state forced people to abandon the liberation of information accompanied by the printing press created the nation state. > general knowledge and specialize. Marshall McLuhan clev- i doubt this guy has really read mcluhan well... > Modern society's information glut has forced most > people to specialize, to learn more and more about less > and less, in order to hold a job. Most of us have become > dependent upon scientific and technological procedures > we don't understand. This does not mean that we should > have stopped acquiring information in the 16th century, > but rather that we have not paid sufficient attention to > how this information can best be assimilated. or where and why this information is proliferating > Our education system has taken it for granted that its role is to > cram as many facts as the human brain can absorb into > young people, and given its highest grades to those most > proficient at memorizing these facts. Since the main goal > of the education system has been to discipline the young, > strengthen their elders' power over them and determine > which of the young can be most useful to the corpora- > tions if allowed into the universities, the fact that most of this could be easily condensed into the indoctrinating role of the education system. > little concern to the System. Now we speak glibly of an > "information highway," which will transform those who > can purchase and master computers and multi-channel > TV into information supermen, dominating the techno- > peasants who lack such resources. This obsession with > data is turning us into replicas of the character of that > name in the Star Trek series, robotized receptacles of in- > formation searching desperately for our souls. this guy is taking 'popular', 'mainstream' conceptions of the emerging information environment and reflecting on their transformative properties. i think this is a waste of time. while his argument hear is good to hear, it is again, entirely misleading. > panding, untrustworthy (we know nothing about the source > of the information, and it can be intercepted by the police), we rarely know much about the source, and communication can always be intercepted by police if they so wish. > pendence on it in the future."3 Elsewhere, Michael Albert > worries that an abundance of free information on the Inter- > net will flood us with material of generally declining qual- > ity, because of its failure to generate revenues for research, > and increase the competitive position of large-circulation > magazines such as Time, which can offer free on-line ver- > sions of their publications by generating advertising reve- > nues while progressive magazines, lacking advertising, must > charge for access to similar but far less elaborate pages > maintained by volunteer staff.@ The activist establishment are shaking in their boots because they don't understand the new media, and they fear they never will. > McLuhan imagines an electronic social conditioning > system more effective than those of Brave New World or > Walden Two: "The computer could program the media to > determine the given messages a people should hear in terms > of their over-all needs, creating a total media experience ab- > sorbed and patterned by all the senses. We could program > five hours less of TV in Italy to promote the reading of > newspapers during an election, or lay on an additional 25 > hours of @V in Venezuela to cool down the tribal tempera- > ture raised by radio the preceding month. By such orches- > trated interplay of all media whole cultures could now be > programmed in order to improve and stabilize their emo- > tional climate, just as we are beginning to learn how to > maintain equilibrium among the world's competing econo- > mies." Need we ask who would determine "the given mes- > sages a people should hear?" Clearly, the same corporate > leaders who have learned how to "maintain equilibrium > among the world's competing economies" in their own in- > terests, and virtually no one else's. I worry when I read this stuff, cause to me it just perpetuates the misunderstanding of the current media environment. All is not futile, the opportunities, (albeit few), are emerging. This guy speaks of mass indoctrination and corporate mind control as if it was a new thing. :) > Electronics and Isolation > > Aside from the problem of who controls information, > computer technology raises the danger of making our > knowledge even more top-heavy with information, at the > expense of its other components. This guy is lost in his own argument. > Computers have mesmerized a lot of people, particularly young people, > and many who wouldn't be caught dead reading a book spend hours > daily in front of their computer screens, despite evidence > that they are thereby endangering their health. Computers What about the rest of us multi-literate? This guy clearly knows nothing outside of computers than what he can stereotype in the context of his surrounding environment. > are great at making facts available, but do little or nothing > to provide the experience, creativity and imagination needed > by our intellects in order to assimilate knowledge. One of > the best sources of such stimuli is literature. No one is going > to read Antigone or War and Peace on a computer screen. Did my computer eat up my large library of books? What about my radio, newspapers, and magazines? What about my friends, family, and community? Did they disappear when I became computer literate? > r- People who forgo such works in order to spend their reading > time chattering on the Internet are depriving themselves of > the best that western thinking has produced. I see western thinking as one of the main problems. > Moreover, the spectacle of solitary individuals hunched > over their computers conducting written dialogues with > other users whom they'll never meet face-to-face can only Whenever I travel anywhere the first thing i do is check my Internet contacts. I can go many places in the world and be met warmly by good people. > able). Going to the movies used to provide some aspects of > the collective experience that television completely lacks. Television is all about the collective experience. > Far from the collectivization McLuhan predicted, computers > and television are in many ways isolating us further in our > homes. And this suits the ruling class just fine. Stuffing > people with information is ol-e way of keepin@ them Co- > cooned, contented and conservative. It is exactly the collectivization McLuhan predicted, (this guy would know if he ever read McLuhan), a collectivity based on shared ideas, feelings, emotions, and involved participation. Unfortunately this collectivization is in the context of corporate collectivization. But nonetheless it still is collectivity. Even if it doens't match our own conceptions of collectivity. > There would, of course, be good uses for computerized > data networks: they could replace such tree-wasting pulp > and paper commodities as dictionaries, directories, encyc- > lopediae, newspapers, popular magazines and telephone > books. However, this seems a low priority among both con- > trollers and users of computer data (although some popular > publications are now "on line"). This guy is fucked. His analysis of the new media is limited to the context of old media. > Computers are inferior to > books for presenting speculative topics, but today the Inter- I'm wary of 'radicals' who choose phrases such as inferior and superior. > net is loaded with the observations of anyone who can afford > access, and can thus bypass the necessity of gaining an edi- > tor's approval in order to "publish." This is a nice blow > against censorship, but, as Albert fears, it means that a lot > of mediocre (or worse) stuff will be as prominently dis- > played as the good material; the reader will need intelli- > gence and knowledge in order to distinguish, and these > commodities are now in short supply. They always needed them, and they were always in short supply. > So what is to be done? Correcting popular mispercep- > tions will take time, which we may not have in view of dan- > gers to the environment and the social fabric, but I don't see It would have to start with Gary, the writer of this article that's for sure. > any shortcut. Much of this time can be spent enhancing our > own knowledge, through interper- > sonal contacts and serious reading. This guy is lost... > As initial steps, I would propose: I had to cut this out, it was just attrocious. He's making the exact same mistake by instead of running blindly out into the future he is running blindly out into the past. The answer of course lies in neither running either way but taking the time to understand what the present has got to say. Media should not be examined in a vacuum, nor out of context, nor without comparison between several media. Old and new media should be used both in moderation and in complimentary facets. We should not throw away the book for the computer, nor should we throw away the computer for the book. We should understand all media. All aspects of the media. We will only find liberation through a collective effort spanning many media, and many vehicles. The specialist revolution of the past (which i'd argue this guy is promoting whether he knows it or not) is dead. The revolution of today and tomorrow is holistic and inherently non-specialized. As with the oral culture, we are all involved with the struggle for liberation. > - networking into small groups, each with a survival plan for > when things start to collapse (what, for instance, would we > do if food stopped coming into the larger cities?). At present > only right-wing survivalists seem to be doing this, and if we > fail to evaluate likely post-collapse conditions in advance > they may well be the strongest group emerging, destroying > lives, knowledge and culture just as did the barbaric tribes > during the previous Dark Ages which followed the col}apse > of the Roman Empire. To have input into the next civiliza- > tion that will rise, we must survive this one. This guy is somewhat messed up, kinda like those same right-wing survivalists. He himself is a victim of the conditions he describes, and perpetuates their effects by perpetuating this misperception of the effects of media. > Many of our century's best thinkers have sought pat- > terns in their respective disciplines. One striking example is > the way Harold Innis, by studying the pattern of Canada's > growth as dictated by the needs of the fur and fish trade, and > Marshall McLuhan, by studying English literature and pop > culture, came to somewhat similar conclusions about the > historic and present role of communications in society. Too bad this guy doesn't understand what they are. > Footnotes These are horrible... > t 1 Murray Campbell, Cybersurvival 101. Toronto Globe > and Mail 25-3-95. The Globe And Mail is Canada's elite newspaper. > 2. Marshall McLuhan interview, Playboy March 1969. > To my knowledge, his most lucid explanation of his > of philosophy. This is again wrong. McLuhan did not write or speak this interview. It was a fabrication of Playboy, and does not in any way represent his views. For a more accurate taste of McLuhan read: "Understanding Media". He wasn't a political radical, but he was a radical nonetheless. > nd 8. "Sunfrog " in Fifth Estate, Winter 1 995 . > an 4. Michael Albert in Z Magazine, December 1994 and > F@hrll@rv, 1 995. > 5. For a fuller discussion of this, see: Paul Davies, The > Mind of God (New York, Touchstone, 1992). > 6. Davies, op cit. > 7. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History. (New edi- > tion, Oxford, 1972.) > 8. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time quoted > at front of Davies, op cit. As with McLuhan, Hawk- > ing's most lucid exposition is in his P/ayboy inter- > view (April, 1 990). If I ever get to meet this guy he's going to get an earfull. What bothers me the most about it is that I was previously under the impression that Kick It Over puts out good stuff. guess not. 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