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Pundits, executives and politicians have lauded the advent of an information age as the golden advancement of civilization.  Ancient agrarian societies gave way to industrial societies. During the latter half of the 20th century however, advanced industrial societies began to collapse when faced with free market world competition.   Rather than adjust to new dynamics, leaders of developed States heralded the information society where no one worked but all talked, as the savior of their exalted status.

During the Dark Age information was tightly controlled by an oligarchy of clerics and lords.  Information was disseminated from pulpits or shouted out as royal edicts.  This limited information of course supported only the interest of the oligarchy.    There was an information explosion around 1439CE when Gutenberg invented his printing process.   People learned to read priests lost their lock on religion and kings lost their monopoly of governance.  Information advanced ideas; leaders like Martin Luther and Oliver Cromwell led increasingly enlightened populations from the oligarchy’s oppression.

For nearly 500 years the printed word served to free people, the most notable was the 18th-19th century revolutions that freed the west from Old World oppressions.  Small towns had morning and afternoon papers.  Cities had dozens of each with multiple editions and extras that informed.  The printed word advanced science where ideas were shared and built upon.  This information sharing led to inventions of telephones and radio.   Telephones equally served business and gossips and radio provided news and entertainment.  Reality became confused as when Orson Wells broadcast the War of the World and America panicked.  Radio was powerful because it linked the listener’s own imagination to reports. Radio became the ideal instrument for propaganda for people believed what they thought they heard and couldn’t reread its reports. There was still the books and papers for the discussion.

Television sold soap and flipped burgers along with its news and entertainment, blending all into a competing societal misinformation mire.  Now nothing is news unless there are pictures but the pictures don’t go along with the stories and the screen is cluttered with simultaneous advertisements and unrelated notes, charts and crawls.  People who get their news only from TV are less informed than those who received no news.  TV is the toy of politicians, sound bites, photo ops and spin-doctors, dis-information rules. 

Scientific exchange became the Internet now carrying e-chats, twit notes (twitter), personal videos and phones link into a molasses of ignorance.  The hallowed newspapers are closing their doors because increasing numbers of non-readers prefer light shows and entertainment to facts, explanations and reason.  Reason is lost in a stormy sea of contradictions. 

After 600 years the oligarchy of political media masters are again gaining control of the message.  The information age heralds an Orwellian world of an oppressive technological Dark Age.  Obey their message!