Monday, December 7, 2009

Blogging the Spectacle

BLAWG!
The internet is a medium of the spectacle. When you read Reading the Spectacle you are, in a sense, literally reading the spectacle.

"In analyzing the spectacle we are obliged to a certain extent to use the spectacle's own language, in the sense that we have to operate on the methodological terrain of the society that expresses itself in the spectacle. For the spectacle is both the meaning and the agenda of our particular socio-economic formation. It is the historical moment in which we are caught."


One might say the internet is a less alienated form of communication, in that amateur creators of free content are afforded the freedom to publish their work in a free to inexpensive forum, relatively free from the constraints of commercial and/or political interests, (though this doesn't mean entities like Google or deviantART or YouTube won't exploit the display of such work for spectacular commerce with context-sensitive smart advertising.) Even so, the internet isn't going to remain as free as it is forever.