Friday 11 am Section - Blog 2

I enjoyed reading McKenzie Wark's "The Weird Global Media even and the Tactical Intellectual" for the very reason that it pertains to our everyday lives, simultaneously on a macro and microcosmic level. Wark states that, "The media that feed us are not only more and more concentrated, but increasingly global in both ownership and extent. Since business consumes a vast amount of media information, and business is increasingly global, so too are the information providers. Three developments come together: the globalization of business communication, the communication of global business and the business of global communication." (pg. 267)

The idea of communication intertwining with business has endless possibilities and I feel that we as 'the future of the economy' should capitalize on the opportunities that new media has provided us. We have the power to manipulate the media to display events across the vector fields of time and space. It is a power that can easily become corrupt and in many ways, it already has. Wark refers many times in his essay to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, I wish to use the past Presidential election to prove my point.

The "media" (Fox News, CNN, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, etc) all create their own narrative when concerning current events. They can express their opinions and directly influence their audiences by expressing their opinions through the TV screen. These broadcasts are reaching millions of people daily, affecting those who are directly and indirectly involved. When Professor Chun showed us the SNL clip making fun of Hilary Clinton, that was a response to the media's manipulation of her character in order to sway voters to one side or the other. Wark calls out the News stations for attacking people when he says, "Exploratory attemps will be made using file footage to construct a beginning to the event." So, my question is, how do we as a society contain, interpret and control these forms of media?