Ten Things
Posted on December 29, 2006
Filed Under Error and bias |
There’s a natural tendency in bubble days like these to regard technology as the source of all innovation. Not only is that untrue it’s also misleading. Not much has changed in 2006 when you look at the stories that make up the news agenda. Though the technology of newsd and opinion, such as syndication and blogging, adds to the sheer volumes of what we know and think, the subject matter has been disappointingly stable.
If it were possible to change news properly then it would look very different. Having said that ecological issues moved up the agenda during 2006 though as yet we’ve not seen ecological issues “investigated”. Online magazines like GRIST have begun that process and, as ever, we will wait some months before we uncover the reality of how vested interests are influencing ecological solutions….
What would make up a rational news agenda for 2007? I think it would look lat
1. How the new agenda is declining in importance as people create and share opinion among themselves around the world.
2. How are cities going to change to accommodate ecological change?
3. How are the conflicts between America and Europe working themselves out post-Iraqi invasion.
4. What is the balance sheet for corrupt Governments across the west in 2006 (Blair, Bush, Ahern….).
5. Are we experiencing a collective escapism as the run of bad news continues to dominate our TV screens? Escapism as expressed in the obesity crisis and the burgeoning of non-reality forms of leisure. Or is the burgeoning of computer memory adversely affecting social memory?
It’s not a radical list nor a msysical one. It does reflect my own preoccupation with a feeling that profound change is taking place in how we think - and that we need to master that change quickly, the feeling that ecological change has profound implications for how we govern ourselves, and the feeling that the really dangerous division we face is that between America and Europe rather than that between Islam and Christianity and that corruption will be one of the factors in how that division plays out.
More on this tomorrow.
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