Understanding Media

The consumer became the producer in 1964.

Automation brings in real 'mass production,' not in terms of size, but of an instant inclusive embrace. Such is also the character of 'mass media.' They are an indication, not of the size of their audiences, but of the fact that everybody becomes involved in them at the same time. Thus commodity industries under automation share the same structural character of the entertainment industries in the degree that both approximate the condition of instant information. Automation affects not just production, but every phase of consumption and marketing; for the consumer becomes producer in the automation circuit, quite as much as the reader of the mosaic telegraph press makes his own news, or just is his own news.

Comments

[fred]

Thanks for this blog.
It's interesting, in this sense, the cathegory of consumer-productive force, from Baudrillard. Don't you think?