One dear colleague, Mr. Gelles was struggling with the
fact that many of us belong to lists, and discuss the prospect
of a brighter economy -- not just a brighter, greedier economy,
but something better.
For example, Mr. Gelles said this to a "Social Credit" list
(and others):
We are up against the popular belief that national
and global aggregate spending is like the money in
ordinary peoples accounts and their monthly bills.
Money is not like that. It can be like the money that
won the Civil War and WW II -- money that
serves objectives not lowest short term price.
And, while some question Mr. Gelles "economic perspective,"
Mr. Gelles then makes the observation that a very small
subset of the population can talk on, say:
List, LINCT egroup (Learning and Networks)
List, Loka Institute (Science Policy)
List, Longwaves (Long waves in the economy)
List, LTSC (P14) (Technological Standards for Learning)
List, LWSIDE1 (a 2nd Long waves discussion)
List, Netfuture (Talbott's newsletter about technology & mankind)
List, Open Spectrum (Can the airwaves be free?)
List, Post-Careerist (What is "work?")
List, Renaissance Network (Moore's list on advocacy)
List, Social Credit (C.H. Douglas' seminal ideas about economy)
List, Telecom Policy - NorthEast (Telecommunications)
List, TOP (The Optimum Policy -- Mr. Burt's list)
List, Telecom Roundtable (Telecommunications)
Gelles comments that we are not heard by the "man on the street"
and can we do something about that?
To which another dear colleague, Mr. Hirschfeld, responded
to my notions that, perhaps, we needed "better production
facilities?" with these reflective thoughts:
--
W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
Research Affiliate, Culture & Media, MIT
Center for Information, Technology & Society
466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA 02176
781-662-4044 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://Cybertrails.org
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--- Begin Message ---
At 2:27 PM -0500 2/19/03, Curtiss Priest wrote:
I have no doubt that you and I and various folk can talk
all day on some selected lists, and that "we" will become
brighter and more informed, but that "politics as usual"
will proceed, almost unaffected.
Addressing your specific proposal -- DVD (or other) based
programming -- what one quickly learns is that the "average
viewer" has come to expect a level of editing, "sound bites,"
clips, etc., that only the "establishment" can afford !
Thus lies the dilemma that I see.
I could not disagree with you more, Curt. While there is no doubt
that the "mainstream media" are pretty carefully controlled, and
challenging points of view are provided access only when they can be
controlled or nullified, John's proposal - which suggests an
alternative media system - has been increasingly possible since the
late 60s.
The cost of creating media has gone down dramatically, and
distribution modes have become ubiquitous. It is really possible for
a small group of dedicated people to generate alternative information
and distribute it via DVD or streaming video on the internet, and in
fact this is currently taking place.
It's false consciousness (generated by the elite who control the
mainstream) that people won't pay attention to non-professional film
and video that lacks the glitz of everyday TV (in any case,
present-day technology makes that glitz accessible very cheaply).
Truth video does not have to have glitz. Think how carefully and
closely people watched (and continue to watch) the Zapruder 8mm
filming of the JFK assassination. If the content is compelling,
people will watch very low-tech imagery with total fascination. TV
news organizations routinely buy amateur video to show on the air, if
that's the only images available. They've even created a group of
extremely popular TV shows made up of low-tech video, from "funniest
home videos" to "wildest police car chases".
The real problem is that the truth is not evident, even in "real"
material. When JJ Gelles and I watch George Bush speak, he sees an
eloquent hero the equal of Lincoln, and I see a liar and a fool.
Unless JJ and I and others can engage in dialogue about what we have
seen, merely having the material will take us nowhere.
Each week millions of people see exposes on 60 Minutes of official
wrongdoing - and yet only when the material is at its most outrageous
will this lead to any action - and the action is always ad hoc, never
aimed at the roots of the problem.
Back in the 60s I was part of an underground film making collective
that created and distributed documentaries about the anti-war
movement and the civil rights movement made from the inside. At a
certain point I realized that if I actually wanted to change people's
minds and get them in motion, I would have to speak with them when
they saw the films.
Consequently, my wife and I stopped making films for a while and hit
the road, traveling around the country with films under our arms,
arranging screenings and then discussing the films with the audience.
The theory was proven in practice - our screenings led to increased
activism and unification of diverse forces - but to have any effect
in a country of a few hundred million, we would have had to have had
thousands of counterparts doing the same thing... and we quickly
discovered that among even our closest allies there was disagreement
on what was happening in the world and what was needed to correct it.
The Internet is a newer technology that provides an even greater
number of people with a voice. But as JJ has repeatedly pointed out,
the result is Babel. When Richard Moore exhorted us to effect a Zen
transformation, his context was the failure of this enabling
technology to work as a transformative tool.
Change occurs when people want change AND when there is good
leadership for change. Both conditions must be met. If Havel,
Mandela, Gandhi and King have demonstrated that large-scale bloodshed
is not a pre-condition of profound social change, they may question
Mao's conviction that "political power comes from the barrel of a
gun" (a lengthy discussion is possible here), but they verify his
conclusion that "a revolution is not a tea party."
Making and distributing DVDs that explain the world around us in a
way that will help people understand what must be done is the easy
part. The real work is in organizing and leading the ongoing
discussion convincingly both within the camp of the film/DVD makers,
and more importantly in the world at large.
As it turns out, even if I wanted to join in with JJ in his DVD
project, I couldn't agree that "reaching the voter" would be the
goal, and we'd be at odds from the git-go.
For an interesting and valuable discussion of the underlying issue, see:
http://www.newsreel.org/articles/socialme.htm
--- End Message ---
