5 ms·
Certainly does. Here is where I overlap with you. I've watched the documentary version of manufacturing consent but not read the book. (Don't tell anyone.) I w
by igravious 9y ago
Certainly does.
Here is where I overlap with you. I've watched the documentary version of manufacturing consent but not read the book. (Don't tell anyone.) I watched The Century of the Self and Hypernormalisation plus a couple of others by Curtis. McLuhan is on my radar but I've never done a deep dive though of course I'm aware of him. I've read The Master Switch by Wu but not Attention Merchants, this man obviously is someone to keep an eye on.
So that leaves McChesney and Toffler. They are now on my radar, thank you. Under general media scholars you mention: H.L. Mencken, I.F. Stone, and perhaps Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. I thought Mencken a critic, Dewey a pragmatist–Rorty rates Dewey very highly, Lippmann I seem to recall to coming across…, Stone, don't think so. Interesting list.
And if I may be so bold. Have you considered The Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset? A prescient work. Somewhat more obscure is The Reality of the Mass Media by Niklas Luhmann, Curtis mentions nearly every cyberneticist and cybernetic theorist bar Luhmann, probably for good reason come to think of it. New media theorists: Walter Benjamin obviously for his The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (but maybe others?), The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich, and finally anything by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Wendy Chun).
I gather that media-philosophie is an actual research programme in German-land whereas here we'd call it media studies or communication studies or new media studies and it's looked down upon to the same extent as cultural studies programmes are or courses on semiotics. I'd like to see media-philosophy (what you use to communicate your message) become an actual branch of philosophy like aesthetics/rhetoric (how you communicate your message).
It's been stimulating, ciao!
- dredmorbius 9y agoThanks for the suggestions, they're new to me. Again, I am not proficient here, just ambitious. The Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset is at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/TheRevoltOfTheMassesJoseOrtegaYGasset https://archive.org/details/TheRevoltOfTheMassesJoseOrtegaYG... More to follow.
- dredmorbius 9y agoA few more thoughts: I.F. Stone, H.L. Mencken, and others (see particularly George Seldes) are far more practitioners than theorists, but they've had a significant mark on theory and make many great observations. Mencken's "Brayard vs. Lionheart" (I believe that's mentioned in my reading list) is especially apt, and is short to boot. It describes a large element of the information-theoretic component (though Mencken of course doesn't call it that) through his Gresham's Law reference and dynamic. Thanks for Gasset, Luhmann, Benjamin, and Chun, as I don't think I've previously run across them. Added to the already imposing book-mountain.
- igravious 9y ago> Added to the already imposing book-mountain. :-) so little time, so much to read …
- dredmorbius 9y agoA notion I try to make ever-more front-of-mind: Read only worthy books. It's similar to the advice of Henry David Thoreau in Two Weeks on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, much of which in fact discusses books and ideas: It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (τελεία) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day. The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism. Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4232/4232-h/4232-h.htm I wouldn't be an absolutist on this point. But I'd note that very, very nearly all that is written is not worth reading. Including myself.