Philosophical Reflections on the Age of Ephemera
37
12 See Neil Postman, “Critical Thinking in the Electronic A ge,” Selected Issues in Logic
and Communication, Trudy Govier, ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1988): 11-18.
13 See Neil Postman, “The N ew s,” Conscientious Objections (New York: Knopf, 1988).
Here Postman points out that a television news discussion o f the federal budget is
inevitably accompanied— and, indeed, must be accompanied— by a scene o f large
machines churning out huge reams o f dollar bills. The visual medium demands motion.
14 Ibid., 81.
15 See, for instance, Kiku Adatto, Sound Bite Democracy: Network Evening News
Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1968-1988 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1990). Adatto is especially keen to point out how little interest there is in the text
o f a campaign. The average “sound bite”— a “bloc o f uninterrupted speech”— lasted 42.3
seconds in 1968. This is an eternity for television— try it with a stopwatch— and it shows
the clumsiness o f early TV production. By 1988 the average sound bite lasted only 9.8
seconds.
16 Cf. Gleick’s expansive overview o f the development o f the idea o f information in
James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (NY: Pantheon Books,
2011): 4.
17 Ibid., 217. See also Claude Elwood Shannon, “Communication Theory o f Secrecy
Systems,” Collected Papers (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 1993): 85.
18 Gleick, 417.
19 See “Neil Young: Steve Jobs Listened to Vinyl, Piracy is the New Radio,” accessed
5/11/12. Neil Young, a product o f an analog age, has expressed surprise that audiences
have been willing to trade accessibility for fidelity in music. See, for example, “Neil
Young: Steve Jobs and I Were Working on the N ew iPod,” accessed 5/11/12.
20 For an overview o f psychological research on the subject, see Jon L. Peirce, Tatiana
Kostova, and Kurt T. Dirks, “The State o f Psychological Ownership: Integrating and
Extending a Century o f Research,” Review o f General Psychology (v. 7, n. 1) March
2003: 84-107; or Lita Furby, “Understanding the Psychology o f Possession and
Ownership: A Personal Memoir and Appraisal o f Our Progress,” Journal o f Social
Behavior and Personality (v. 6, n. 6) 1991: 457-463.
21 My thanks to Hanne Jacobs for providing me with a copy o f her article “Towards a
Phenomenological Account o f Personal Identity,” Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences:
Essays in Commemoration o f Edmond Husserl Carlo Iema, Hanne Jacobs, and Filip
Mattens, eds. (New York: Springer, 2010): 333-363. In a similar vein, Sartre would say
that we engage in— or are defined by— “projects,” about which he says:
Now the meaning o f the past is strictly dependent on my present
project. This certainly does not mean that I can make the meaning o f
my previous acts vary in any way I please; quite the contrary, it
means the fundamental project wh ich 1 am decides absolutely the
meaning which the past which I have to be can have for me and for
others.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Gramercy Books,
1956): 498 [emphasis mine].
22 Jacobs, 348.
23 Ibid., 350.