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TIL: 'Engineering Consent' was coined in 1955 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent

• smingo 5y ago
  Chomsky talked of "Manufacturing Consent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  • slim 5y ago
    with the difference being the point of view : Engineers are competent people, whereas Manufacturers are capitalists controlling means of production
• programmarchy 5y ago
  Although the term wasn't coined yet, the idea of engineering consent goes back even further to the Enlightenment period, when Reason sought to overthrow King and Church. Weishaupt and his Illuminists (of conspiracy theory fame) reasoned that men were largely mechanistic in nature, and could be controlled by their passions. Therefore, whoever could control men's passions could control men. Their intentions were nobler then if you take them at face value (i.e. help men become enlightened beings rather than consumers), but illuminism was a crude form of the behaviorism and structural functionalism operating today. It's pretty interesting to trace the developments from then, up until the advertising and PR we are immersed in today.