Information Please

The centrality of media is disguised, in part, by the prevalance of that assured, hard-edged phrase information society, or even more grandly, information age.

Such terms are instant propaganda for a way of life that is also a way of progress.

Who in his/her right mind could be against information or want to be without it? Who wouldn't want to produce, consume, and accumulate more of this useful stuff, remove obstacles to its spread, invest in it, see better variants of it sprng to life?

Information age glows with a positive aura. The very term information points to a gift--specific and ever replenished, shining forth in the bright light of utility. Ignorance is not bliss, information is.

But we diminish the significance of media and our reliance on them in everyday life by classifying them merely as channels of information. Media today are occassions for something we call fun, comfort, convenience or pleasure. We have come to care tremendously about how we feel and how readily we can change our feelings.

Media are means. We aim, through media, to indulge and serve our hungers by inviting images and sounds into our lives, making them come and go with ease in a never-ending quest for stimulus and sensation. Our prevailing business is the business not of information but of satisfaction, the feeling of feelings, to which we give as much time as we can manage.

To an unprecedented degree, the torrent of images, songs, logos, brands, text, and stories streaming has become our familiar world.

--Todd Gitlin, media theoritician