| Nose-counting, a cherished part
of the eighteenth-century fragmentation process, has rapidly become a cumbersome
and ineffectual form of social assessment in an environment of instant
electric speeds. The public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate
and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today,
the mass audience (the successor to the "public") can be used as a creative,
participating force. It is, instead, merely
given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers
to today's questions.
A new form of "politics" is emerging,
and in ways we haven't yet noticed. The living room has become a voting
booth. Participation via television in Freedom
Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing everything.
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