the arc of the 20th century

(from 2010)

the arc of the 20th century

the centruy of analog eletricity as principle infrastructure, mass media and its children- mass culture, mass advertizing, mass consumerism.

the 20th century starts in the 1880s with the implementation of electric infrastructure, the dawn of cinema, the coming together of radio communication; it ends in the 1990s with the internet and the utter stagnation of mass consumerism, mass culture being completely played out.  the crux of the century of the arc of the electronic, mass media century is the bomb in 1945.  on the way up to the bomb the spirit was blind excitement, rabid frnezy of production, then after the turnover came the 60's and the rush of an awakened/disillusioned mass media consumerism, cynical, tongue-in-cheek, etc.  the 20th century ends with the internet and so begins a new thing altogether.

is the mass media psyche dead, no longer adaptable?  the cultural software that the previous 3 generations ran doesn't work in the personalized media culture of internet browsing.  their cultural stance doesn't work.  this is why billboard magazine sucks, reality tv sucks, hollywood movies suck, these are outmoded forms of expression, mythology bound by the 20th century necessity to group media into broad categories delivered through centralized institutions.

 the music of the 20th century, jazz and rock, was mass media vis a vis electrical recording and replaying techniques.  on the way up to the bomb, it was pure unbridled unconcsious excitement, on the way down to the internet it was backwash, rehash, self-aware and ever more cynical, forcefully ironic.

the beatles, who stand at the middle of the arc of mass media, have both aspects in full- they came in on the peak of an african-american rooted raw excitement (jazz and rock and roll) which became the spirit of the white man's rabidity of electronic lifestyles and consumption in the first half of the century- personal autos, telephones, an aristocratic ability to travel and communicate and experience cultural storytelling through cinema, radio and tv. but the beatles came in the post-bomb mass media expeience, which was a disillusionment, a carelessness with spending and a pure cynical run for the money.  the beatles were at once blissfully unaware, frenzied and stupid and simultaneously painfully self-aware, cynical, manipulative, baroque.  

analog mass media lasted exactly one century.  it's over now, no more radiowaves drifting into the hinterlands and cosmopolitatain sectors of the galaxy.  now the aliens who watch for our signals will have a complete story, with an explosive climax right in the middle and a confused, disillusioned denoument in which the humans all came back to their original conclusion- that no one knows any damn thing at all about reality, in reality; all identifications and categorizations are provisional.