Media Virus

Douglas Rushkoff - 1994

ISBN 0-3-345-3j8276-5
P90.R87 // 302.23-DC20

The first step toward empowerment is to realize that noe one takes the mainstream media any more seriously than you do. Having been raised on a diet of media manipulation, we are all becomiing aware of the the ingredients that go into these machinations. Children raised hearing ans speaking a language always understand it better than the adults who attempt to learn its rules. This is why, educators believe, our kids understand computers and their programming lanuguages better than the people who designed them. Likewise people weaned on media understand its set of symbols better than its creators and see throught the carefully camouflaged attempts at mind control. And now Americans feel free to talk back to their TV sets with their mouths, their remote controls, their joysticks, their telephones, and even their dollars. Television has become an interactive experience. (p.5)

. . . a media virus might be an event, invention, technology, system of thought, musical riff, visual image, scientific theory, sex scandal, clothing style or even a pop hero -- as long as it can catch our attention. Any one of these media virus shells will search out the receptive nooks and crannies in popular culture and stick on anywhere it is noticed. Once attached, the virus injects its more hidden agendas into the datastream in the form of ideological code -- not genes, bu a conceptual equivalent we now call "memes." Like real genetic material, these memes infiltrate the way we do business, educate ourselves, interact with one another -- even the way we perceive reality. (p.10)

Author: George H. Brett II -- ghb@biblio.boulder.lib.co.us
Copyright 1995 CNIDR-ITD-MCNC
Last Updated: 04/24/95