New Media, New World.
I'm reading a book on metaphor (called Metaphors We Live By) that shows how we people routinely rely on metaphors to structure our thinking and it does a good job of showing how confused we really are. So I thought I'd post this picture and ask the obvious question: where are all the real surrealists?
This is a recent discovery for me but hell, the guy’s already famous. I’ve put it in the links section. It’s a lesson, for me anyway and I’m still learning, in what to do with a blog.
I know from time to time I make assertions that seem a bit extreme but I think the way communications changes also changes the way people's minds work. Look at the social behaviour of bloggers… dialogue in screen print is so novel and it forces a degree of openness on people that's also new.
Here's an example. That is of me hedging my bets.
Yesterday I sat down with a leading multimedia company to discuss new media projects. At one point we got on to the new radicalised audience. We both agreed that some areas of news coverage are deeply affected by the pharmaceutical industry. If you look at AIDs' treatments, there's a valid argument that much could be done with high dose intravenous Vitamin C. In order for doctors around the world to realise that, there has to be a system of communications in place that will endorse the use of intravenous Vitamin C. There is and it's owned by the pharmaceuticals. They are the ones who can guarantee to get a treament proselitysed around the world in next to no time.
The unspoken part of that conversation is neither I nor the person I was meeting would want to make too much of that argument in a newspaper article – the pharmas are big job ad placers.
I say this because in an earlier post I'd discussed the FT's John Lloyd's contention that journalists somehow have a higher ethical standard than the average person. That argument is brewing also over here. I think we use different words. Writing stories in a way that suits a PR company…. that's wrong. Not writing stories that undermine the economics of a newspaper – that's reality.
