... Cultures shaped by the printed word prized logic, reason and dispassion. But a global culture conditioned by television - which is to say, by the power of sound and image - to process information a certain way, McLuhan taught, will revert to pre-modern modes of thought...
It will be more emotional, more tribal, less trusting of traditional authority and more inclined to privilege individual judgment. And it will have more political and religious extremism. Under the right circumstances, mass opinion can be mobilized quickly against traditional authority figures, who must have the means to adapt with haste to the new information environment if they wish to hold on to their power to influence events and thus to conserve their own power...
The U.S. government is like the queen, cluelessly clinging to a media and public relations strategy best suited for the day before yesterday. The president put in charge of public diplomacy an old friend, Karen Hughes, whose best-known sortie in this job was a "listening tour" of the Mideast that more or less flopped...
Bush & Co. Must Learn to Fight on the Information Battlefield
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