We're walking through a period of profound socioeconomic upheaval in an almost hypnotic trance.

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What is perhaps the most remarkable feature of our age is how, in a time of fundamental upheaval in the nature of knowledge and power, we have managed to avoid public recognition of the changes going on all around us.   It is almost as if bombs were falling all around us, yet we paid no notice to the either the explosions or the craters, and when we looked up at the sky, all we could see was a benign and brilliant blue.

We have entered an age where the most fundamental type of economic competition is now cognitive rather than substantive—where a relentless reduction in the number of providers of any given type of product or service is ultimately more a function of sensory overload in the number of images we consumers are capable of processing, in the cacophony of images clamoring for our attention, than of traditional and literalistic factors like efficiency in production or distribution.    In this environment, it has become “normal” for competition between corporations to be decided on the basis of advertising budgets, and for the defining factor for success within them to likewise hinge on proficiency in the management of perceptions.  

Yet we’re told over and over again that if anything is odd about the contemporary state of affairs, it’s simply the result of government meddling, and things will be fine if we just let business do what it does best.  We’re advised to continue regarding the whole process as if we were townsfolk of the 1700s comparing the craftsmanship and prices of local artisans’ pewter spoons.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1998 ROBERT WINTER.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.