Intermission

"Through the production and consumption of images, we are created, exhausted and remade."
— Sut Jhally

Some people fear that technology will lead to a less understood world, because of the media's power to manipulate people's interpretations and the illiterate, uneducated people who are vulnerable to these images, videos, television dialogues, and news bites that traverse through the internet void.

One fear brought up in one of our interviews, specifically Harjinder Bedi, was the power of media to have the negative effect of such as "technology being another vehicle for social domination and cultural domination, and for new wave colonialism of developing countries".


A question that I was asked recently was: How does human nature impact social organizations? Not necessarily how do social organizations reflect human nature but How does the nature of man impact how men live together in society?

How did human nature impact colonialism, or initiate it? How does human nature deal with developing countries? Does human nature differ from continent to continent?

What made Russia and China communist, and the United State a democracy or England a parliamentary system? Do all humans have their own nature? IS there such thing as a collective natural?

In Post Colonial Literature I am reading The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi, who discusses how it is human nature to assimilate to colonialism, and then to shift to revolution. But in shifting towards a revolt, the colonized abandons their own nature and uses the colonizer's values and nature to combat the colonizer.

This can be translated through technology, literature, language, and now new media. Having come from the western world and imposed onto the post-colonial countries, media has the potential to put the 20 yrs old generation on th same playing field (depending on class), but it also has the potential to influence the 20 yrs old generation even further with western music, video, images, movies, news, and language (not depending on class). Misconceptions of both worlds, first and third, are being flung at each other from every which way. Dominance is now found in popularity, viewership, public interest and appeal.

Money is not as physically present with the new media as it was with resources, and market advertising. The amount of material needed to function in a new media world is by far less than it used to be, and therefore one's physical perception of money is also being sucked into the void, or the "semes" of new media. The stock market initiated this 'untouchable concept' of money, but now it is even more untouchable, and unreal. What is real is what is noticed, and what is not noticeable anymore is the amount of money one has, because the internet and new technology is more accessible, lighter, and becoming cheaper by the second (because the new thing is seconds away), more people can be noticed due to the things they say.

"The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room" - American Gangster
Just because you have the money to shout does not mean you are saying anything important.