Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity --- our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.
Michael Crichton, "The Lost World (Jurassic Park)" [1995]
There have been Cassandras warning this was coming for over 30 years.
Michael Crichton also talked about the Gellmann Amnesia effect. aka how leftists read modern media, and when they see an error in reporting when the media gets it wrong about something they know about (ie video games), they kick up a fuss about how much they fucked up, but then they move to the next page about something they're not an expert on and they don't question the media they're reading. They completely forgot about how badly the media fucked up talking about some other subject.
Those two books are very good. The movies were good for movies, but they didn't try to do justice to the books, which is just as well since it would've been impossible.
It had two major points towards the end. A Panacea that cures all is worthless, because the moment you stop taking it all the things that your immune system should be getting practice against come back to a vulnerable immune system. Even minor diseases could be fatal.
Even an extremely deadly disease will eventually adapt to become less deadly, because if it doesn't it will kill itself off.
There have been Cassandras warning this was coming for over 30 years.
Michael Crichton also talked about the Gellmann Amnesia effect. aka how leftists read modern media, and when they see an error in reporting when the media gets it wrong about something they know about (ie video games), they kick up a fuss about how much they fucked up, but then they move to the next page about something they're not an expert on and they don't question the media they're reading. They completely forgot about how badly the media fucked up talking about some other subject.
It's fucking bizarre.
That book's title just took on a whole new meaning to me, and it seems it had to have been intentional with a paragraph like that.
Those two books are very good. The movies were good for movies, but they didn't try to do justice to the books, which is just as well since it would've been impossible.
His Andromeda Strain should be required reading.
It had two major points towards the end. A Panacea that cures all is worthless, because the moment you stop taking it all the things that your immune system should be getting practice against come back to a vulnerable immune system. Even minor diseases could be fatal.
Even an extremely deadly disease will eventually adapt to become less deadly, because if it doesn't it will kill itself off.