posted
I need another name for them. I was considering the Meme-ocrats, but that could sound too much like democrats, or mammory-crats (which makes us all think of Clinton).
We are in the Information Age. What that means, but what most people do not grasp, is that those who control the information have the power. During the Iron Age, the peoples who developed Iron weapons created great empires. In the Industrial Age, the Industrialists had great power. In the Atomic Age the worlds two great powers were the two countries with the worlds two greatest atomic arsenals. Now we are in the Information Age, and have been for a couple of decades. Only now is it becoming apparent that those who hold the Information, those most skilled at dispersing it, dealing it, spinning it, are those with power.
Spin Doctors are becoming Spin Lords.
In Russia, the vast majority of media outlets are controlled by either the government, or the political party of the President.
In China, North Korea, and other totalitarian countries, the state controls the press. In North Korea it is a crime to turn the radio off, and all radios only get one station.
Zimbabwe made headlines by grabbing control of its press outlets recently. Both the reporters and the news outlets needed to be licensed by the government. When the free newspaper was due for its licensing, it was refused, as were all its reporters. Why? The reporters were refused because they worked for a newspaper that was not licensed. The newspaper was refused because it paid non-licensed reporters.
In Iraq, the freedom of the press we plan on bringing to that country has been momentarilly superseded by the US, to create a nationwide Iraqi Broadcast system, who's content is provided by coalition forces.
This is to fight the communications spin lords and memeocrats of Al Jazirah.
In the us the Right screams of Liberal Media Bias as they buy more and more of the media themselves. Clear Channel grabs majority media control in Radio and some Television in most major US Markets while Microsoft tries to control the free Internet.
However, this story is the best description of the wars to be fought in our information age.
Let me recap it. A president and his forces are in the midst of trying to convince his country, and the world to a lesser extent, of the need to attack Iraq. They do this by spinning the information they have.
A man knows that this spin is wrong. He counters this attack with his own information.
He claims that the White House countered his attack, and strove to stop others from making similar moves against thier spin, by attacking this man's wife.
And they attacked not with physical weapons or financial threats.
They attacked with information.
Someone somewhere leaked information about the ambasador's wife to the press. She was a CIA operative. The spin lord did it in such a way as to hide themselves from this crime.
Such information can kill.
Now we can all watch as each side plays the press and the information they have, in such ways to damage their enemies and bring honor and power to themselves. It is not pretty, but it can be amusing, like watching a school bus crash.
There are other info-crimes that we have witnessed recently. The entire EnRon accounting fraud was set up to mislead and misinform the investors. World Com and the others were all the same.
We are in the Information Age folks. Arm yourself appropriately.
posted
I'd have disagree with the suggestion that there's anything unique about the Information Age in respect to the power of 'Spin Doctors.' The manipulation of information has always been a vitally important source of power, particularly in democracies. In fact, if you'll go back and look at Plato's Gorgias, written thousands of years ago, you'll see it is essentially a treatise on the powers and dangers of Spin Doctors.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Countries and corporations will become obselete! Only those with information will be rich and powerful! People will pool their knowledge! People will pay millions to find out what is actually going on....
It will be called the information wars, and lots of people will write books about it.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," Novak said on "Crossfire." "There is no great crime here."
"They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators," Novak said.
quote: Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.
Also, how are "administration officials" not working in the Bush administration? Did he mean the Post Office Administration? If, as he claims, the CIA confirmed it, wouldn't that be "government officials" and not "administration officials?"
Also, if they asked him not to use her name, why did he?
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Both sides are right here. It's true that there has always been a tremendous amount of power that can be wielded by people who possess information; it's just that so much more information can be obtained these days, and thus more power.
"The Disciples don't have bishops...they have editors."--circa 1850
Posts: 1041 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I know that in history the mastery of spin and info was a tool of those in power to maintain or gain power.
Socrates and most of the western philosphical tradition came not from the schools of religion or arts, but were part of another, very important Athenian tradition, the schools of Rhetoric. (Philosophy is the child of Lawyers) The Rhetorician, early Spin Lords, bent the fabled Athenian democracy to the will of their aristocratic families.
Others have used it over the centuries, from the Crusades to the Spanish American War (fought mostly to sell more newspapers in the US) to the fabled golden age of spin, the Nazi Propaganda machine.
However, as more people gain more power and freedom, controling the people by controling their thoughts becomes more and more important. In 1942 who could have thought that 10 people in two plans, supported by maybe 100 others could kill 2000+ Americans (the other 9/11 terrorists did damage as well, but not on the same scale.) In 1800 who would believe it. In ancient Athens, that type of destruction was reserved for the gods.
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