CODEXO

America Winning New Cultural War For Global Audiences – Europe Lags In Producing Widely Accessible “Products”

America has opened a lead that will perhaps not be overtaken in the global market for “cultural exports” in the form of digital materials – the movies and music, books and broadcasting and all the other media that shapes global consumers’ taste in entertainment and their view of the world they live in.

That conclusion emerges from an imposing study written by a leading French specialist who interviewed key players in this field in 30 countries. The research and findings, presented by Frederic Martel in his new book, entitled “Mainstream” in French (not yet translated into English), have special value because they come from France, a country that has a specific national government-run “culture policy” dedicated to the promotion of French language and culture and promoting resistance to American “cultural imperialism.”
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What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Carr—author of The Big Switch (2007) and the much-discussed Atlantic Monthly story “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”—is an astute critic of the information technology revolution. Here he looks to neurological science to gauge the organic impact of computers, citing fascinating experiments that contrast the neural pathways built by reading books versus those forged by surfing the hypnotic Internet, where portals lead us on from one text, image, or video to another while we’re being bombarded by messages, alerts, and feeds. This glimmering realm of interruption and distraction impedes the sort of comprehension and retention “deep reading” engenders, Carr explains. And not only are we reconfiguring our brains, we are also forging a “new intellectual ethic,” an arresting observation Carr expands on while discussing Google’s gargantuan book digitization project. What are the consequences of new habits of mind that abandon sustained immersion and concentration for darting about, snagging bits of information? What is gained and what is lost? Carr’s fresh, lucid, and engaging assessment of our infatuation with the Web is provocative and revelatory. –Donna Seaman