Disinformation Not New

This 1985 quote from Neil Postman talks about disinformation on television news:

“In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different roder from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information--misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information--information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985

That is why the "Fin Wake Indra Net" project, otherwise called "Experience Mythology Project" is so important for society-wide education and teaching about media systems.

1. James Joyce's 1927 onward publication of FInnegans Wake is about past and future generations of media.

2. Marshall McLuhan's 1968 book "War and Peace in the Global Village" spells out this pattern of Finnegans Wake medium generation learning.

3. This website you are on, along with www.WakeIndra.com website - are 2024 Rolling Release of additional ways to expand the teachings of Finnegans Wake, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman into the modern social media, digital Internet platforms.  I, Stpehen Alfred Gutknecht, started as a professional in social media in 1985 on dial-up analog telephone lines, even social media radio before that! I've worked for the richest people in the entire world during key periods of Internet. I predicted the Arab Spring Internet Revolution in 2009 and traveled to North Africa in 2010 to be boots on the ground for the world's first Information Revolution... then in March 2011 I traveled to Middle East as predicted the outbreak of the Syria war. I have been posting analysis of social change from digital information systems now openly on social media since I started this project December 16, 2009 - now in 14th year! And I estimate this project will go well into the future, a total of 35 years! Please spread the word about James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and a revival of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman's teaching! Please help me out! Join in the world-wide multi-language multi-media multi-platform Media Ecology liteeracy project, "FIn Wake Indra Net"! Thank you!

Information warfare links and resources:

1. https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/JAMS-vol-12-no-1/Russian-Cyber-Information-Warfare/

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