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daavbhat
week2_mediaaddictiononline1.pdf
how i learned to stop worrying about “addiction” and love the technology
July 20, 2012: 24-year-old James Holmes walks into a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado and starts shooting at the audience. he killed 12 people and injured 70 others.
July 20, 2012: 24-year-old James Holmes walks into a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado and starts shooting at the audience. he killed 12 people and injured 70 others.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris: killed 12 students and teachers on April 20, 1999
religious and political terror over Marylin Manson: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ov-CX8WIWd6EKjccusOgudws-eSPzPbA/view?usp=sharing
“Darling Nikki” by Prince and the Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA_FqxZLSMk
Tipper Gore & Susan Baker: founders of the Parents Music Resource Center (1984).
Tipper Gore & Susan Baker: founders of the Parents Music Resource Center (1984).
Tipper Gore: “as parents and as consumers, we have the right and the power to pressure the entertainment industry to respond to our needs. Americans, after all, should insist that every corporate giant— whether it produces chemicals or records— accept responsibility for what it produces.”
Tipper Gore & Susan Baker: founders of the Parents Music Resource Center (1984).
Susan Baker: “it was ‘Like a Virgin.’ she [my daughter] said, ‘mama, what's a virgin?’ and i said, ‘what do you mean?’ she said, ‘well, Madonna sings this song: ‘like a virgin / touched for the very first time.’ what's a virgin?’ i was speechless. here she was still playing with dolls at 7.”
WDEF news report on Tipper Gore’s censorship efforts aired on 4.22.86: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNT4DikDdQw
the founders of the Parents Music Resource Center convinced the Senate to convine a hearing on a list of 15 songs they designated as “porn rock.”
Prince, “Darling Nikki”: sex/masturbation
Sheena Easton, “Sugar Walls”: sex
Judas Priest, “Eat Me Alive: sex/violence
Vanity, Strap On ‘Robbie Baby’”: sex
Mötley Crüe, “Bastard”: violence/language
AC/DC, “Let Me Put My Love Into You”: sex
Twisted Sister: “We’re Not Gonna Take It”: violence
Madonna, “Dress You Up”: sex
W.A.S.P., “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)”: sex/language/violence
Def Leppard, “High ‘n’ Dry”: drug/alcohol use
Mercyful Fate, “Into the Coven”: occult
Black Sabbath, “Trashed”: drug/alcohol use
Mary Jane Girls, “In My House”: sex
Venom, “Possessed”: occult
Cyndi Lauper, “She Bop”: sex/masturbation
Frank Zappa, and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, testified at the hearings.
Frank Zappa, and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, testified at the hearings.
Frank Zappa: “there are several ‘historical accounts’ from which to choose. let's arbitrarily choose this one: one day in 1985, Tipper Gore, wife of the Democratic senator from Tennessee, bought her 8-year-old daughter a copy of the soundtrack album to Prince's Purple Rain—an R-rated film which had already generated considerable controversy for its sexual content. for some reason, however, she was shocked when their daughter pointed out a reference to masturbation in a song called ‘Darling Nikki.’ Tipper rounded up a bunch of her Washington housewife friends, most of whom happened to be married to influential members of the U.S. Senate, and founded the PMRC.”
Frank Zappa, and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, testified at the hearings.
John Denver testifying at a Senate committee hearing on music censorship: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dTUXtiEqManaNoA2P eufbklvi--fVkr8/view?usp=sharing
Dee Snider: “gotta give John Denver [credit]. his testimony was one of the most scathing, because they fully expected—he was such a mom-American-pie-John-Denver-Christmas-special-fresh-scrubbed guy. everyone expected that he would be on the side of right—right being censorship. when he brought up, ‘i liken this to the Nazi book burnings’—that's what he said in his testimony—you should've seen them start running for the hills! his testimony was the most powerful in many ways.”
Socrates (470-399 BC) one of the founders of philosophy
Socrates (470-399 BC) one of the founders of philosophy
was a totally against the idea of writing things down!
thought that writing destroyed philosophical thought and spoken debate
every lesson we know of Socrates was written down later by Plato
Socrates (470-399 BC) one of the founders of philosophy
was a totally against the idea of writing things down!
thought that writing destroyed philosophical thought and spoken debate
every lesson we know of Socrates was written down later by Plato
“[writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they
will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. the specific which you have
discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth,
but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they
will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the
show of wisdom without the reality.”
Bill Keller executive editor of the New York Times from 2003 to 2011
Bill Keller executive editor of the New York Times from 2003 to 2011
Bill Keller executive editor of the New York Times from 2003 to 2011
“basically, we are outsourcing our brains to the cloud. the upside is that this frees a lot
of gray matter for important pursuits like FarmVille and Real Housewives. but my
inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human:
our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of
community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.”
Gutenberg’s printing press
Gutenberg’s printing press
-for churchmen, the basic problem was that print allowed readers who have a low position in the social
and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves, rather than relying on what the
authorities told them.
Gutenberg’s printing press
-for churchmen, the basic problem was that print allowed readers who have a low position in the social
and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves, rather than relying on what the
authorities told them.
-in England, in the 1660s, the chief censor of books Sir. Roger L’Estrange, was still asking the old question
“whether more mischief than advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of
typography”
Gutenberg’s printing press
-for churchmen, the basic problem was that print allowed readers who have a low position in the social
and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves, rather than relying on what the
authorities told them.
-in England, in the 1660s, the chief censor of books Sir. Roger L’Estrange, was still asking the old question
“whether more mischief than advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of
typography”
-“o printing! how thou has disturbed peace of mankind.” –Andrew Marvell (poet, 1672).
Gutenberg’s printing press
-for churchmen, the basic problem was that print allowed readers who have a low position in the social
and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves, rather than relying on what the
authorities told them.
-in England, in the 1660s, the chief censor of books Sir. Roger L’Estrange, was still asking the old question
“whether more mischief than advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of
typography”
-“o printing! how thou has disturbed peace of mankind.” –Andrew Marvell (poet, 1672).
-an Italian writer in 1550 complained that there were “so many books that we do not even have time to
read the titles!”
Gutenberg’s printing press
-for churchmen, the basic problem was that print allowed readers who have a low position in the social
and cultural hierarchy to study religious texts for themselves, rather than relying on what the
authorities told them.
-in England, in the 1660s, the chief censor of books Sir. Roger L’Estrange, was still asking the old question
“whether more mischief than advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of
typography”
-“o printing! how thou has disturbed peace of mankind.” –Andrew Marvell (poet, 1672).
-an Italian writer in 1550 complained that there were “so many books that we do not even have time to
read the titles!”
-the problem of “information overload,” as it is now known, goes back a long way.
nickelodeon theaters, popular from 1905-1913
nickelodeon theaters, popular from 1905-1913
Adolph Zukor founder of Paramount Pictures
-when talking about the importance of making more “artistic” movies he said it was important to: “kill the slum tradition in the movies.”
nickelodeon theaters, popular from 1905-1913
Adolph Zukor founder of Paramount Pictures
-when talking about the importance of making more “artistic” movies he said it was important to: “kill the slum tradition in the movies.”
-Harper’s Weekly writing about “slumming it” in the nickelodeons:
“let any person who desires—metaphorically speaking, of course—put himself in the shoes of the pickpocket and visit one of these five-cent theaters…having entered one of these get- thrills-quick theaters and imagined he is a pickpocket, let him look around at the working men, at the tired, drudging mothers of bawling infants, at the little children of the streets newsboys, bootlacks, and smudgy urchins” (1907).
U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1953)
chaired by Sen. Robert Hendrickson (R-NJ)
spent the equivalent of $414,000 in 2019 dollars
“in This Week magazine, april 20, 1947, J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI stated: ‘high in the ranks of
contributors to juvenile delinquency are the vicious and unscrupulous peddlers, producers and printers of obscene literature. they are as
responsible as the sex fiends they incite by their wares. after one brutal rape-murder case the
killer told police, ‘it was them magazines-the ones with sex pictures in them.’”
U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (1953)
chaired by Sen. Robert Hendrickson (R-NJ)
spent the equivalent of $414,000 in 2019 dollars
“another victim: ‘14-year-old Walter was arrested after a woman reported that someone was
walking on the roof of her house. the youth carried a bottle of chloroform, a pad of cotton, a
billy club and leather shoelaces in his pockets. he openly admitted his intentions to use the
chloroform and club for assault, commit the sex act and tie her up with the string. Walter came
from a good family. hidden under the mattress of his bead was a bundle of
obscene pictures and magazines. from them Walter had formulated his vicious plan.’”
Newton N. Minow chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
(1961-1963)
“when television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.
but when television is bad, nothing is worse. i invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set
when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a
newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. keep your eyes glued to that set
until the station signs off. i can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
you will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and
thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more
violence, and cartoons. and endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. and most of all, boredom. true, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. but they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate,
i only ask you to try it”
“the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves— result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
Marshal McLuhan “The Medium is the Message.”
“…the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.”
— Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (1889-1976)
“technology, which joined the Greek root, techne (an art or craft) with the suffix ology (a branch of learning), first entered the English language in the seventeenth century… it was accorded a somewhat greater prominence by the founders of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but they also were invoking the limited sense of the term to mean higher technical education.”
—Leo Marx
“the hazards i have in mind are conceptual, not physical. they stem from the meanings conveyed by the concept technology itself, and from the peculiar role it enables us to confer on the mechanic arts as an ostensibly discrete entity—one capable of becoming a virtually autonomous, all- encompassing agent of change.”
—Leo Marx
“but the radical thinkers who led the way in framing this master narrative of progress—Condorcet and Turgot, Paine and Priestley, Franklin and Jefferson—did not, like Webster, unreservedly equate human progress with the advance of the mechanic arts. they were committed republicans, political revolutionists, and although they celebrated mechanical innovation, they celebrated it only as the means of achieving progress; the true and only reliable measure of progress, as they saw it, was humanity’s step-by-step liberation from aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and monarchic oppression, and the institution of more just, peaceful societies based on the consent of the governed. what requires emphasis is the republican thinkers’ uncompromising insistence that advances in science and the mechanic arts are valuable chiefly as a means of arriving at social and political ends.” —Leo Marx
“factory owners, merchants, and financiers, did not regard innovations in the mechanic arts as merely instrumental—a technical means of arriving at social and political goals. [Senator Webster] identified his interests with those of the company’s directors and stockholders, and as he saw it, therefore, wealth-producing innovations like the railroad represented a socially transformative power of such immense scope and promise as to be a virtual embodiment—a perfect icon—of human progress.
consider, for example, the Boston Associates— the merchants who launched the Lowell textile industry. they, to be sure, were concerned about the inhumane conditions created by the factory system—and they surely wanted to be good stewards of their wealth—but they assumed that they could fulfill their republican obligations by acts of private philanthropy. They believed that innovations in the mechanic arts could be relied upon, in the long run, to result in progress and prosperity for all.”
—Leo Marx
“by consigning technologies to the realm of things, this well- established iconography distracts attention from the human—socioeconomic and political—relations which largely determine who uses them and for what purposes.
to attribute specific events or social developments to the historical agency of so basic an aspect of human behavior makes little or no sense. technology, as such, makes nothing happen.”
—Leo Marx
examples of what Tipper Gore categorized as “porno rock”:
“The Dope Show” by Marilyn Manson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R682M3ZEyk
“Dress You Up” by Madonna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWtpd8mS5jw
“We’re Not Gonna Take It” by Twisted Sister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9AbeALNVkk
David Foster Wallace- The Dangers of Internet & Media Addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxW6zg6FmCE
I quit social media for 30 days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z8_YhWoq2o
Johann Hari
-writer and journalist
-author of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs
