Spectacle and Experience

Just some notes on things I need to keep in mind.

Writers like Debord from the Situationist International and their theorizing of the society of spectacle, this seems to be of key importance for anyone interested in theorizing the conditions for the possibility of experience in an age of increasing technological mediation.

It seems that a key difference between reading an analogue book and reading its digital copy on some sort of device is that digital devices play a part in distributing spectacle in the postmodern world. They have a decisive role in "distancing" one from experience. Just as language fulfills the desire to mediate experience (Will to Mediate), technological prosthetics perform a similar function in that they act as sorts of hypnotic intercessors.

I will also have to consult some of Baudrillard's writings on the simulacrum. These ideas will likely provide some methodological insights for relating all of this to the tendency of late capitalist societies to project a "fake" reality (spectacle) that acts to distract a populace from experiencing the decline in actual standards of living. It may be the case that mediation in late capitalist societies experiences an intensification in relation to the need for such distraction of the populace.