Media Literacy Week: How Will We Screw Ourselves?

Media Literacy Week: Day Five, Wrapup

The media literacy articles this week have been designed to open our collective eyes to the hidden messages in the information and ideas that we consume on a daily (even hourly) basis.  I sincerely hope that it’s been helpful.  I’d like to wrap up with a segueway and an extrapolation about the ways we choose to use what we learn from those messages.

I like to pretend that I’m a literary person; I’ve read both Brave New World and 1984. Both books impacted my worldview in lifelong ways. Yet, for some reason, I never thought to compare and contrast the ideas the authors present. Whose vision of our future is correct?  Thankfully, Stuart McMillen drew this incredible comic for simps like me.  I highly encourage you to take the time and read the entire thing, let it process, then think about what our society has become today.  Who was the better prophet?

Personally, I’m of two minds on this one.  Before, I would have automatically said that Orwell had it down, no question. But the more I delve into the instant messaging, instant news, instant update, instant viewing world of the internet and all it offers, the more I think I sway towards agreeing with Huxley.  As a first-world country, we have everything we could ever want to sate our impulses for food, sex, gossip, and general “feelgood” and we can get it in an instant.  Sometimes even for free.  I think that’s the real devil here – luxury and the overabundance of sensation, not a lack of information (which I do believe exists, but not to the point of destroying us on a personal level).

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The Bird response:  “I don’t necessarily think these two dystopian ideals are meant to be pitted against one another. Regulation of feel-good luxuries (even if they’re incredibly bad for you) spurns Orwellian societal response. Yet, in many dystopian tales, we see societies that overdose on pleasure or create the “perfect society” by removing pain and suffering, which leads to a placid and thoughtless society (watch the movie Equilibrium to understand this theory). We’re almost leaning towards Huxley’s dystopia today. I mean, Ford is coming out with these new “Smart Trucks” and every time I see those commercials, I envision HAL 9000 saying, “I’m sorry, Bird, I cannot open the drivers’ side door” as it flings us off a cliff. My thought: where one theory doesn’t get us, the other will.”

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Questions?  Comments?  Concerns?  Bueller?