Hacker News Reader

Comment by jefflombardjr | Hacker News Reader

This article does a good job of drawing parallels between the book and reality in a short amount of time. I feel like the article is just scratching the surface though.

> Television was transforming the news into a rapid and proliferating series of images, a form of entertainment that prized ‘the unreal’ and the ‘more or less totally irrelevant’. You can contest facts, he said, but not images.

Noam Chomsky has some excellent work in this area. It can be very very dry reading, but very informative. Check out manufacturing consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

In the same vein and much more entertaining is this video that compares local news channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

View on HN

I don't remember how Manufacturing Consent referred to the facts vs images distinction, can you give a pointer to that?

I think the work by the Situationists is more relevant, particularly the concept of the Spectacle. But it was "in the air" at the time, arguably even the works of Hunter S. Thompson reflect it.

I was more referring to the role that the news plays in all of this rather than specifically facts vs images.

Haven't heard of the Situationists, I'll check them out! Thanks!

> You can contest facts, he said, but not images.

with the ubiquity of photo editing, and ai driven video manipulation, i'd argue one can contest images too(i):

>> Ghost in the Shell addressed this issue in 2005(o) >> The Tachikoma units are debating how to stop a nuclear strike and one suggests that broadcasting a live feed of the nuclear sub would help, but the idea is reasoned against due to the technological capabilities to fake such a feed: >> "Pictures don't prove anything anymore. It would just end up as a source of amusement for the uninvolved masses, an image from an unknown source that showed up at an all too convenient time." >> beyond this inflection point one must now trust both the content and the source

(o) https://youtu.be/yAoj3AskFMI

(i) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16522643

Manufacturing Consent (and the accompanying documentary) were fairly groundbreaking at the time, but also obviously comes from an Ivory Tower. Chomsky seems to really believe the public would have adopted some of his platforms if they hadn't been drowned in distraction. You're not going to get the average American to care about the plight of the East Timorese until American soldiers are dying there....Vietnam demonstrated that.

In the early 90s though, the documentary played to packed houses of college students who suddenly claimed to have a longstanding concern for East Timor...then East Timor became unfashionable and they went back to not giving a hoot. If anything, Chomsky "manufactured" his own "consent", for a time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com