{"id":65778,"date":"2023-09-23T06:02:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-23T11:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65778"},"modified":"2023-09-23T06:02:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T11:02:03","slug":"the-rise-of-huxwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65778","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Huxwell"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Rise of Huxwell<\/a><\/h3>\n

Two dystopias are better than one…<\/strong><\/p>\n

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= HUXWELL<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Noam Chomsky stopped just one rung shy of perfection with his illuminating book,\u00a0Manufacturing Consent<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>about how commercial media work as extensions of government and corporate power to manufacture the consent of the masses. Likewise, Matt Taibbi\u2019s title,\u00a0Hate, Inc<\/a><\/strong>.<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is a near-perfect indictment of cable and digital news profit models that manufacture and prioritize enmity to the exclusion of the truth and the common good.<\/p>\n

Both works fall just one rung shy of perfection, however, not because they aren\u2019t impressive examples of applied critical thought and insight, but because neither consent nor hate are the primary products of commercial media. Rather, they are toxic byproducts of a commercial mass media whose primary product is\u00a0addiction\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe effect of mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.\u201d \u2014\u00a0<\/em>Christopher Lasch<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the early 21st century, we turned the corner from a society in which addiction was the exception to the rule to a society in which addiction\u00a0became<\/em>\u00a0the rule. By 2004, still some years\u00a0before<\/em>\u00a0social media, the smartphone, and streaming media secured their reputations as history\u2019s most perfect narcotics, the average American \u2014 according to the Ball State University\u00a0Middletown Media Studies<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0report (the first large-scale observational study of American media consumption habits) \u2014 was already consuming more than\u00a0eleven hours<\/em>\u00a0of media each and every day.<\/p>\n

Concurrently,\u00a0TV Everywhere<\/em>, the commercial imperative behind the trillion-dollar campaigns for high-speed bandwidth and streaming HDTV, was ordained as the latest media industry mantra \u2014 part of an all-hands-on-deck digital blitzkrieg to normalize late-stage addiction.<\/p>\n

Since then, hundreds of studies, articles, books, and documentaries have confirmed what anyone with a smartphone, social media account or a teenager already knows or suspects: we are a nation of media addicts \u2014 by design. We are, per Stanford addiction researcher Dr. Anna Lembke, a\u00a0Dopamine Nation<\/a><\/strong><\/em>…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rise of Huxwell Two dystopias are better than one… = HUXWELL Noam Chomsky stopped just one rung shy of perfection with his illuminating book,\u00a0Manufacturing Consent,\u00a0about how commercial media work as extensions of government and corporate power to manufacture the consent of the masses. Likewise, Matt Taibbi\u2019s title,\u00a0Hate, Inc.\u00a0is a near-perfect indictment of cable and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10061,3880,1211,33936,1880,30990],"class_list":["post-65778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-aldous-huxley","tag-dystopia","tag-george-orwell","tag-jeff-einstein","tag-noam-chomsky","tag-substack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65779,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65778\/revisions\/65779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}