Raymond Williams on media determinism. As true in 2011 as it was in 1973:
If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he (sic) may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself.
It is hardly surprising that this conclusion has been welcomed by the ‘media-men’ of the existing institutions. It gives the gloss of avant-garde theory to the crudest versions of their existing interests and practices, and assigns all their critics to pre-electronic irrelevance.
