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INFORMATION PUT TO USE
The Sunday Age’s Terry Lane - now reduced from writing weekly to writing every two weeks, which probably means he’s been half-fired since his last column debacle - muses on the nature of news dissemination:
Cultural critic Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, reckons that our news collection and dissemination technologies have turned the age-old problem of information on its head: where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they have to invent contexts in which otherwise useless information might be put to some use.
• Useless information: long-disproved claims by someone who never served in Iraq;
• Invented context: the war on terror is opposed even by US troops;
• Put to some use: Lane got a column out of it.
Terry is still presumably drawing a full pay packet at The Age, where he is lurking in the paper’s Green Guide predicting trends in technology:
‘From time to time a new type of gadget turns up in the shops and you say “Nah. No one’s going to buy that.” ‘
He’s such a cynic.
ilibcc @6
Based on a discussion some time ago, I remember there being 2 Terry Lanes; the techie one is the sane one.CHeers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2007 04 02 at 11:42 AM • permalink
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That was an intuitive observation by Postman. I’m already putting it to use.
Useless information is John Travolta’s opinion on global warming. The invented context is a looming environmental disaster.