Author Topic: Who Governs? Robert Dahl  (Read 215 times)

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Offline Michael Hardner

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Re: Who Governs? Robert Dahl
« on: May 05, 2018, 06:23:43 am »
Texts and online communication are as impersonal as communication between people can get.

How so ?

Anonymous pamphlets were common in the colonial American era.  There was however a 'public' and people tended to know who published them.

But 'impersonal' is only one aspect of communication.  Television is intensely personal and radio more so.  But they are also visual/oral/tactile and do not allow for response.  Radio is credited with making the mass audience believe they had a personal relationship with the leader.  Hence you got 4-terms FDR and Hitler also.

Text communication is more visual, and permanent.   And the web is decentralized.  From what I am seeing, we will start to see a big swing left in our politics quite soon, but also a measure of new Victorianism which will be a hybrid synthesized from today's customs.

......

But as McLuhan taught us, we won't know the results of new technologies until years after.
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