Does the present ‘Brave New World’, in the hands of Ugly Duckling Zuckerberg, and the Larry Summer’s trained ‘Lean In’ guru Sandberg make the reader a bit uneasy, or an even more extreme emotion? ‘The Tradition of The New’ described more than the Art World of 1959, but describes the ‘manufactured need’ for the latest electronic gadget, in the 21st Century?

In this historical moment, its about the promise of the latest toy to enhance the hum-drum lives of the easily bored consumer. The Fix for this ennui is the latest, and most up-to-date ‘thing’ produced in those Sweat-Shops of China, and other Asian countries, that are the manufacturing hubs that keep Western Consumers happy. ‘More’ is the promise of these electronic enhancements to consumers who long for what?

Changing a soiled diaper, calming an upset customer, currying favor with a client, getting ahead, a world explained in the 1955 fiction of Sloan Wilson’s ‘The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit’, plus ça change! These are nullified by that thing, that will rescue the consumer from that hum-drum, the jejune of daily life under a Capitalism, that produces nothing, but continually replicates itself : it has ‘evolved’ into a Casino that can’t control its actors’ greed.The Radiant Future, in the ever evolving ‘Now’!

Political Reporter

https://www.ft.com/content/9a698a68-18e2-43df-aeab-557b8723dc8d

P. S. How might ‘consumers’, in a Mass Culture, seek to address their deminisment, in such a Culture? One way would, and is, about acquiring the latest Status Object. So the acquisition of the latest I Phone ,or other coveted object, provides a temporary solution to that anonymity. So ‘The Market’ offers only a temporary analgesic, to the consumer’s aspiration for a self-emancipation project linked to acquisition alone.