I wasn't reffering to the mismanagement of global media, I was talking about its existance. Call me a Luddite, but I see in the very near future an ever more serious break with everything (in regards to human civilization) that has come before. Communications being one of the most pronounced the fundamental aspects of this. We grow up surrounded by ads and billboards and stuff, so at some point we just learn to filter it out, and then none of the ads, good or bad, matter anymore. The same is true of culture in general. People listen to CNN and read Plato and respect Picasso not primarily because they are good or bad, but because they are rare, or at least that's the way I see it. Once everyone has something to say, no one will listen to anything anyone has to say. Scarcity is value, and the opposite of scarcity is the opposite of value.
It's not that the message will be a bad one, I really don't care what message is broadcast. It's that the medium will alter human culture and ways of interacting with the world. Think about this way: since TV was invented millions of shows have been broadcast, and none of them have fundamentally changed anything. But the TV itself, simply by existing, has changed much. Right now, there are maybe a few million people on Earth who actively contribute to "culture", which means TV, books, radio, blogs, music, magazine, advertising and all the rest. Notice that all these are mediuns for communication. Now, imagine a world in which every person, literally every single person, contributes to culture. There is no precedent for this, not even remotely. It would be a profound break with the past, and would very seriously change humanity's basic experience of existing.
This shit freaks me out far more than all the nukes and guns and madmen of the world combined. Maybe I'm just wierd.
