Thoughts on Jeremy Rifkin

[byquist]

Do you think we are in the "Age of Access" as Rifkin proclaims in his 2000 book (chapter 10 the best chapter -- and, why this is being asked in the philosophy section)? Does everyone now want to be a stand-up comic and just have fun?

[MaryLupin]

There is another book that discusses some of these same issues but does it through anthropology/sociology. Dean MacCannell wrote a book called The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. In it he uses the image of the tourist to discuss the nature of authenticity and how we code things in the world as "real." In a sense it is a look at the sociology of postmodernism as we live it and create it.

I think what Rifkin does is look at the consequences of this kind of reification by examining how getting to say whether something is "real" (Is this the "real" Tibet?) is like buying and selling experience. It makes even experience a commodity and therefore somehow not a subjective experience any longer. And yet, it is this carefully groomed experience that has become the most prized of possessions and so we go for it without realizing how much it may cost us socially. Anyway, I'm not sure I buy the doomsday scenario since people are always claiming new ways will be "the death of us." Humans normally go through a really bad patch, then after some death and mayhem, reassert themselves and go on.

I don't know. You buy his conclusions?

[byquist]

Precise insights you have there. Not done yet, but, I'd say he's a bit repetitive, reitterating basically one theme employing diff. phrases, but that's okay, a talent for words and word-usage. I like what he said about international music, and how some of the cultural and national character gets lost when it is turned into a popularized form. He quotes a lot of sources which are good for follow-up. I'd have to say its constructive and more worthy than many books!