2300) Much of the information [in the "information age"] is not true. We live in a time besotted with Bad Information.

Joel Achenbach
"Reality Check" in
Washington Post (12/2/1996)
quoted by Kendrick Frasier in
"Articles of Note" in
Skeptical Inquirer (March/April '97)

2301) Why get your news from seasoned professionals when you can get half-witted rumors from random strangers [on the Internet]?

Joel Achenbach
"Reality Check" in
Washington Post (12/2/1996)
quoted by Kendrick Frasier in
"Articles of Note" in
Skeptical Inquirer (March/April '97)

[One reason to get information from the web rather than from the seasoned professionals of journalism is that American journalism is a broken system. Not only is it continually being gamed by people who have discovered its inherent weaknesses, making it more difficult for reporting which intends to be neutral and biased to also be accurate, but at the same time, the continuing concentration of media ownership into the hands of a limited number of corporations makes contemporary journalism more vulnerable to manipulation from the top. This means that in some circumstances better and more accurate information is available from trusted sources on the web than is available from traditional journalism, which is on the one hand inhibited by conventions which are no longer totally relevant, and on the other has been invaded by people, at the top and the bottom, who have an agenda other than unbiased reporting of the news. – Ed Fitzgerald]

2302) What if I had grown up in the past of in a nonmedia culture? Would I still be "me"? Would my "personality" be different?

I think the unspoken agreement between us as a culture is that we're supposed to consider the commercialized memories in our head as real, that real life consists of time spent away from TVs, magazines and theatres. But soon the planet will be inhabited by people who have only known a world with TVs and computers. When this point arrives, will we still continue with pre-TV notions of identity? Probably not. Time continues on: Instead of buying blue Chairman Mao outfits we shop at the Gap. Same thing. Everybody travels everywhere. "Place" is a joke.

Douglas Coupland
"Two Postcards from the Bahamas" in
Polaroids from the Dead (1996)

2303) We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us.

Douglas Coupland
"James Rosenquist's F-111" in
Polaroids from the Dead (1996)

[Coupland is here wittier than he is wise – the theory of the "blank slate" has been thoroughly undermined. See Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.]

2304) Two identical parties competing against each other with no alternatives – It's like the Disney version of democracy. How do you fight a cartoon?

Douglas Coupland
"Washington, D.C.: Four Microstories,
Super Tuesday 1992"
Polaroids from the Dead (1996)