From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Thu Aug 22 2002 - 11:17:51 MDT
Consider the words of Carl Sagan, one of the great seers of our age:
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's
time when the United States is a service and information economy; when
nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other
countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very
few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the
issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas
or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our
crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties
in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's
true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and
darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay
of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the
30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common
denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and
superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!"
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