[Janice D. Soderling]

I know I said I was through with this debate but Post 18 is such an excellent example of the downdumbing of reasoning abilities that it should be addressed.

Firstly Mr. Palmer, in a previous post, challenges me to explain a statement which I have not made. Then he returns and tries to answer it for me. And in his argument he supports the very notions that I introduced in the thread i.e. the danger of consolidation of goods and/or services into the hands of monopolies (a situation in which one company controls an industry or is the only provider of a product or service) and oligarchies (a small group of people who together govern a nation or control an organization, often for their own purposes).

a) he suggests that such consolidation as Amazon represents frees him from the excessive fuel expense that driving to an independent bookstore entails.

ExxonMobil[ is one of the largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization in the world, having been ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 for the past 5 years, and is the second largest company in the world by market revenue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil

b) Quote: … Amazon ['s ] goal is to make money on sales, not anything else--Bezos wants to be the point of sale for the world,

c) Quote: Perhaps you imagine a world in which Amazon gains a total domination of the market and then cuts us off Soviet-Bread-Line-Style.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg

The following post refers to TechniDirt. I'd like to also refer to it; today's post (April 18) http://www.techdirt.com/user/mmasnick which indicates the intention and ideal use of the Internet which most certainly speaks against the idea of one or some few actors controlling it.

In providing a system for manipulating this sort of information, the hope would be to allow a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve with the organisation and the projects it describes. For this to be possible, the method of storage must not place its own restraints on the information. This is why a "web" of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system. When describing a complex system, many people resort to diagrams with circles and arrows. Circles and arrows leave one free to describe the interrelationships between things in a way that tables, for example, do not. The system we need is like a diagram of circles and arrows, where circles and arrows can stand for anything.

I'd like also to suggest some further reading picked after a quick search through my bookshelves (possibly available on Kindle): The Culture Industry by Theodor Adorno, Democracy and the Marketplace of Ideas by Erik Åsard and W. Lance Bennett, The Marketing of the President by Bruce I. Newman, Om Televisionen (English title On Television) by Pierre Bourdieu. None of these are new, but all are worth reading still.

I daresay this topic—control of the media and information industries—will become even more topical as the American presidential campaigns move out of first gear.

Anyone who doesn't have bubble wrap inside their skull ought certainly to see the reason to strive to control information content and availability.

Finally a quote about Adorno's book mentioned above:

…He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused by his many detractors of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria. In today's world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.

Add to that the fearsome thought of having access only to trivial and/or brainwashing information, and worse, believing there to be nothing else.
I'll bet you a dollar to a stale doughnut that if you took a poll of the general public (or of the Tea Partygoers) and asked them the origins of the national motto "In God We Trust," most would vaguely believe it came with the constitution.