THE AMERICAN MUSE

The United States of America consists of various eminent and influential individuals. Yet, when broadly examined, its people are of a single breed, a collective mentality; are of an ardor that burns with a luminosity nonpareil in the world. In relativity, Americans outshine the sun. It is inherent in our spirit for most American citizens are ancestors of the revolutionary breed; it is in our faces; our department stores; our ambitions; our labors. The proponents that led to the establishment of this country and also these thinkers’ muses would claim that this mode of being is universally innate in each person. Therefore, this high spirit does work its influence into the American media. Chiefly, it is the overbearing will of perfection; the most competitive esprit de corps in the history of all the great civilizations in the world; and now it is intertwined in the illimitability of the information age.

As this spirit endows itself in all that is American, it is inserted deeply through the inner workings and intricacies of the media. I am not fain to say that it has a direct influence that is not only ubiquitous in American society, but, controlling, manipulating, and of a caliber of power that is nearly impossible to silence in our acts, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and most wholly, in our persons. I reject all attempts to make a falsified claim that the media does not have a role in the decisions I make; it does, and probably to an unending extent. Such is the pervasive nature that the media has acquired today, and more and more at this very second, that to completely evade its influence would be possible only if one resigned all responsibility, care for American ideology, and endeavor to converse, learn, and be susceptible to influence from most Americans.

The long arm of the law would be much more proper if applied to the media. The information age and the enhanced ability of people to communicate has not only effaced the old conduct of business, but has maximized the way the media can assert its dominance over the American psyche, even over myself. In short, American citizens are at the whim, nay, the maxim of the Law of Accelerating Returns; a mathematical statement that tells of the exponential growth of technology, supported by Moore’s law (i.e., the exponential shrinking of transistor sizes on an integrated circuit). Propelling this law is the fact that as it increases exponentially the population the media now influences will grow, not only as human numbers rise, but with the sole factor of time. I state this under the recognition that with the increase in technology and information accessibility will come more advertisements, more businesses and reasons for them, more media power. The effect of one is direct unto another. The media is a medium and is the alembic through which our conception of reality and understanding is transcended.