sunbum
01-03-2006, 07:35 PM
By Peter Bronson
Cincinnati Enquirer
There are no terrorists. The World Trade Center was destroyed by missiles in a plot by the U.S. government. (There's probably a sign at the crater: "Your tax dollars at work.") And did you know ancient temples in Egypt have carvings of helicopters and there's a Stonehenge replica on Mars?
Something called the World Truth Coalition in Great Britain sent me a letter all about it, including color pictures. It's funny, but it's not a joke.
Welcome to the End of Truth - one of the Big Ideas that will shape our future, according to Alvin Toffler, who predicted it all 25 years ago when most of us thought the future would wear designer jeans and disco boots.
In "Future Shock" (1970) and "The Third Wave" (1980) Toffler predicted cloning, fragmented families, culture wars, design-it-yourself computers and a political media mutant we now call the blogosphere. He's the Jeane Dixon of Big Ideas - whose predictions actually came true.
And the End of Truth is a very big idea. "We are ... moving into a pretty dangerous period," he said in 1999. "The dark side of the new technologies, with deep political implications, is what we call the end of truth."
I think he was talking about movies that shoehorn Forrest Gump into newsreels of Nixon, and Oliver Stone rewrites to make history more politically correct. Or cameras that are forced to lie by Photoshop manipulation, to show missiles hitting the Trade Center - or Condi Rice with minstrel-show eyes in USA Today. Objective "news" is increasingly partisan - with Fox and talk radio on the right and most of the rest on the left.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060103/COL05/601030308/1009/EDIT
Cincinnati Enquirer
There are no terrorists. The World Trade Center was destroyed by missiles in a plot by the U.S. government. (There's probably a sign at the crater: "Your tax dollars at work.") And did you know ancient temples in Egypt have carvings of helicopters and there's a Stonehenge replica on Mars?
Something called the World Truth Coalition in Great Britain sent me a letter all about it, including color pictures. It's funny, but it's not a joke.
Welcome to the End of Truth - one of the Big Ideas that will shape our future, according to Alvin Toffler, who predicted it all 25 years ago when most of us thought the future would wear designer jeans and disco boots.
In "Future Shock" (1970) and "The Third Wave" (1980) Toffler predicted cloning, fragmented families, culture wars, design-it-yourself computers and a political media mutant we now call the blogosphere. He's the Jeane Dixon of Big Ideas - whose predictions actually came true.
And the End of Truth is a very big idea. "We are ... moving into a pretty dangerous period," he said in 1999. "The dark side of the new technologies, with deep political implications, is what we call the end of truth."
I think he was talking about movies that shoehorn Forrest Gump into newsreels of Nixon, and Oliver Stone rewrites to make history more politically correct. Or cameras that are forced to lie by Photoshop manipulation, to show missiles hitting the Trade Center - or Condi Rice with minstrel-show eyes in USA Today. Objective "news" is increasingly partisan - with Fox and talk radio on the right and most of the rest on the left.
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060103/COL05/601030308/1009/EDIT