Information Revolution

Paul Starr writes in the very first sentence of his introduction that the past several decades have become the "information revolution". While I agree that we are in a state on information overload what Starr is really saying is that the information itself depends on the powerful institutions that stand behind the media. What do those institutions want the media to imply to the general public. Starr brings politics into the first paragraph stating,

"The communications media have so direct a bearing on the exercise of power
that their development is impossible to understand without taking politics
fully into account, not simply in the use of the media, but in the making on
constitutive choices about them." Starr pg. 1 of intro

This quote says much about what Starr is setting up for the rest of the book (I imagine) to defend his premise. The way media develops does depend of the culture in which the moment is in. What I find really important is that what information gets put out in the open depends on those constitutive choices that are being made. After all in today's day people are more interested in celebrity gossip then the politics of their own country. That represents something to other countries about the U.S.

SIDE NOTE: Constitutive means;

1. Having power to establish, appoint or enact.


2. Making a thing what it is.