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Saturday, January 08, 2011

A Temporal Distortion

Just like the Enterprise under Captain Jean-Luc Picard, we are perilously close - 20,000 kilometers - to a temporal distortion. The distortion lay in the death of newspapers and the ensuing extinction of film critics. There are some independents on the Internet - thank heavens - but soon the only film critics will be working for large commercial interests: the measure of success will continue to be $ on the weekends and effectively all serious and artistic discussion will be put into Cryogenic suspension until some years in the future when every penny will have  been squeezed from a film, and a real evaluation will be possible, as it will no longer harm someone's bottom line.
Of course, such things happened before, but not with such complete thoroughness as is possible now  by control of electronic media.

A temporal distortion putting off serious discussion until the future...
Interesting.
Somewhat like the universe  before Wikileaks, where knowledge in depth was put off for years until papers were unsealed. Just like the universe now, where government policy has been and continues to be the flavor of the month:  2009 was "Stimulus Cinnamon Spice" year, 2010 was "Rocky Road  (for Obama)" year, and 2011 will be "Balance the Budget Berry"! Enjoy your temporal loops as we repeat even deja vu.

I have said that Democracy is a fine system by which large numbers of intelligent beings process information, and it very well may be the best such system. However, if the system lets itself be tied into repeating its mistakes over and over again, it has defeated its purpose.

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