Certainty Abolishes Hope, And Robs Us Of

Information Is Now A Commodity That Can Be Bought And Sold, Or Used As A Form Of Entertainment, Or Worn Like A Garment To Enhance One's Status. It Comes Indiscriminately, Directed At No One In Particular, Disconnected From Usefulness; We Are Glutted With Information, Drowning In Information, Have No Control Over It, Don't Know What To Do With It.

We Had Learned How To Invent Things, And The Question Of Why We Invent Things Receded In Importance. The Idea That If Something Could Be Done It Should Be Done Was Born In The Nineteenth Century. And Along With It, There Developed A Profound Belief In All The Principles Through Which Invention Succeeds: Objectivity, Efficiency, Expertise, Standardization, Measurement, And Progress. It Also Came To Be Believed That The Engine Of Technological Progress Worked Most Efficiently When People Are Conceived Of Not As Children Of God Or Even As Citizens But As Consumers-that Is To Say, As Markets.

There Is No Escaping From Ourselves. The Human Dilemma Is As It Has Always Been, And We Solve Nothing Fundamental By Cloaking Ourselves In Technological Glory.

[m]ost Of Our Daily News Is Inert, Consisting Of Information That Gives Us Something To Talk About But Cannot Lead To Any Meaningful Action. (68).

Voting, We Might Even Say, Is The Next To Last Refuge Of The Politically Impotent. The Last Refuge Is, Of Course, Giving Your Opinion To A Pollster, Who Will Get A Version Of It Through A Desiccated Question, And Then Will Submerge It In A Niagara Of Similar Opinions, And Convert Them Into--what Else?--another Piece Of News. Thus We Have Here A Great Loop Of Impotence: The News Elicits From You A Variety Of Opinions About Which You Can Do Nothing Except To Offer Them As More News, About Which You Can Do Nothing.