“The state is stupider that most of its components.” This is wiener’s critique of mass communication because he believes mass communication reflects the views of some type of oligarch and not the views beneficial to the community as a whole.
This is hard to dispute especially in the days of what he called the “big five” - radio, tv, newspapers, magazines and film. Each communication element being controlled by multi million dollar corporations. But even in the days of the internet, a seemingly uncontrollable communication leveler, we still major influence by politically interested parties. Except that in the age of networked communication the messages needed to be channeled through one of the “big five” whereas today, the internet allows everyone their own communication medium and the ability to deliver a message directly to the community. So I think Wiener would still find the same problems with information, language and society in the internet age that he did in the the ‘50s.
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