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Man and the multitude. This University of Illinois Centennial symposium presented by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences studies contemporary man poised between past and future. And between isolation and community of the world. Guest speakers and panel members comment on the conflicting forces which push men apart from others and into communion with others. Lectures in this series will be followed by discussions involving speakers visiting professors and University of Illinois faculty members as well as interested students. On our last program Daniel J Boston professor of American history at the University of Chicago discussed the culture of communications. He explained the three types of communities the one a vision and mission the one of function and collaboration and the modern community obvious because dismantling. The development of norms or group standards has tied together members of the modern community. Information about these norms has been prompted by the use of statistics ready made
clothing proper financial records income tax intelligence tests opinion polls life insurance and immigrants. Through these factors people have become aware of inclusion or exclusion from groups. Mr. Bush then will answer questions by Dr Rieders Simon associate professor of sociology and research associate in the Institute of communications research at the University of Illinois Dr. James W. Kerry assistant professor of journalism and research assistant professor in the Institute of communications research. And Fred S. seabird dean of communications arts Michigan State University. Dr. H Egon a professor of speech and head of the Division of General Studies at the University of Illinois well act as chairman for the discussion. One of the members of the student panel will open the discussion I think that the papers for example that their reader will not remember what he read the day before and not remember what he read the day after that
that they live continually in the present. The Hollywood westerns that distort the history and present us with a very very conceptualized the mutiny of the old left innocent distorts our path to cut us off from the reality of it also literally that advertising that tells us that we can to and in meeting the president. Just by buying a new suit of clothes or buy them by buying a Mustang and acquiring the girl and all the things that go with that. We can't deny our past if you think this is the plight of the American dream that the media has encouraged this sort of Horatio Alger dream because no matter what our past that we can conquer it we can overcome it. Another call in here before we connected was to burst and I was thinking that an individual who
sits and watches television for any great length of time will periodic leak through the through the through the and it was that he received that well even even other forms of media will receive a lot of what you call data. I'm left thinking objectivity is a you know as much a fact of life as a girl will be sought after and something that would seem to be at least according to the viewpoint of the individual that every interest group that there's the program to serve as we say if there were little office behind this would support a liberal argument and a general rise especially around election time you can see all kinds of things like this and I've been in when the average have been proud of just a lot of death and the cigarettes gamble you saw that's where there were people. The cigarette people who were looking to the interests of the cigarette manufacturers were were pulling all of the all of the information. If if they call again information that was
produced as to the relationship of cigarette smoking to cancer and on the other hand the other interests are supposedly in the public safety that their argument where we're presenting information and the like to believe that it was really valid that there was a strong connection and so individual who used to seem that continually and then I'm going to make sure he doesn't get any he doesn't get I think normative structure in the sense that you could do to grab a ball that he sees nothing but a crumpled thing right morass of opinions expressed and expressed and I relive that. I was thinking about a certain craft He's working here are playing better atomization or the person being plugged into this technology. Individually his. Record Player tapes that are being probably hired to record music in the car's power they can make getting a secondary sort of experience right. You know right if people stand back from the
event rivals the point two people stand around watch this group kill. Rats like rushing it on TV we don't really feel any I mean it's not like Nicole this is not an extension of ourselves really because we watch it and we somehow feel disassociated from and I do think that we are becoming animals that running across this is something like The Beatles for a for that never changes. Yeah there's a tendency in France to bring people together. If you've ever watched right now chances are some of the big questions where you have a lot of dancing to individuals around the floor around look absolutely ludicrous when they hear they stary. Doing skate or something like that you are looking for people that are certain you know or that develops a kind of community action that they look good when there are people
doing another Tennessee it's like these in California where everything that moves so fast because of the absolute enormousness you get I can see like in these apartments you know are you people of a certain like Norm conscious people there's a good team and very good very good team going Scott and they are getting their partners and then they go in with the idea let's all be friendly let's have a community are the same things like the Haight Ashbury. Yeah they have a sense of community and maybe it's a revolt against those atoms that do think there are certain ways or maybe to different levels and whenever we can more specialized or more normal concerts for particular groups within that group I think there are certain groups forming it. You're going to think that
I was thinking the first time I ever think I want in my life. I mean it's been over a long period or. When you are writing you ravers in music and romantic music and what we have some way of the random generator from the well made of something which you know by the governor out of a lot of Rahm Emanuel and the Republicans here because it would make think something about that
which. Back to back to Britain. The fact that more data coming in from technology already in some larger way. And what happened in a lot more data coming in the world becoming much more rich in what available. I want an awful lot of information coming in over the data coming in and it's not rhetoric. One can leverage where no one anywhere in the world are making me think very you know for whatever limited amount of information available whether they happen information coming in that is totally I'm going to never reputation there's nothing you can do with it. Nobody had any experience with with the rep coming in every can't get anybody very very and to tell you that you're never really going to lean upon them
very happy. Can we get you to respond. Well I mean if it was not my intention to use technology as an explanation as the explanation I was just suggesting that was a one direction in which we might look. There are some other questions that arise out of the interesting comments that have been made. One of the things that's puzzled me considering that so much of our technology has been directed to controlling climatic conditions into our climatic condition along with ready made clothing of course central heating refrigeration and air conditioning have been characteristic American institutions have been astonished to discover the great emphasis
which is better. The number of times that the temperature air and the weather prediction was given it was a Saturday which does not consist primarily of farmers and an effect on crops. Doesn't some very severe weather doesn't even affect our transportation. Basically what the temperature is and what is likely to be and whether it's been the center and so on. This repetition Also I am a listener and a watcher of the media is a little off the radio and impressed by the repetitious as you say there wasn't much repetition but the similarity of the broadcasts. Hour and a half hour. Sometimes it's 25 minutes past and five minutes to
something astonishing that if you listen for longer than two minutes the proper moment. Same thing over again. And some catastrophe on television. Well aware that expensive broadcasting programs time to the second big expensive taste of the function of editing stretching and cutting. You have to make it. Happen to coincide every four minutes and seconds or whatever
certain broadcast. Filling the receptacle takes precedence over all other considerations and becomes more and more true then of course what the filling of the filling is there to provide us the sensations that are supposed to come of black and white impressions on the paper or of images on the television screen or whatever but I think Parkinson's Law which you're all acquainted with is only one example of that. Never ministers or any institution because the more administrators the administration there has to be more more interoffice. And some of faxing and other duplicating machine cannot be explained
by the need for it. They can only explain it was a question a suggestion was made as it was puzzled that I was suggesting that there was an autonomous nature to this process I think it is autonomous like you have the economy going. You can't stop it and you have large industries like Xerox and others. IBM and so on they spend their time inventing as much as anything else. Television is a very good example. Was there a demand for television were developed and perfected and the development then created the demand. How much demand was there for Electric for example electric toothbrushes 15 years ago when there wasn't any but the economy developed certain there were developments in the economy which provided the
people who were producing them then had to create the demand in order to dispose of commodity. Another aspect of this which is which I think has not had sufficient attention is something which I discovered to my astonishment was actually an invention an institutional invention and that is the model. And have you read the autobiography of Alfred P. Sloan recommended to drink as an interesting fascinating and unfortunately it's not very readable. It's one reason why it hasn't been widely read but it's full of interesting intimate and long General Motors and more than anybody else who has a way of applying the principle to the whole economy.
That showed that it would sell more automobiles by having variations in the types of every year and he simply developed and applied this principle. He also developed another principle which was related which was I suppose what we would call the ladder of consumption became head of General Motors I had an agglomeration of automobiles and the cheapest Buick was less expensive than the most and most expensive Chevrolet and so on that he decided to take kind of a ladder of consumption so people could climb up this ladder moving upward from each other and so on and so on. And he did this by separating the class the price ranges and then he also the other one thing about the model oddly enough and this is one of the most amazing parts of the story.
He's a very smart man. But one of the things which was overlooked was if you persuaded people to buy a new automobile every year. That the people dispose of the automobiles while they were still usable. And this was the fly in the flying landscape. But this is just another example of the way in which to keep them going there's a momentum that creates all kinds of problems. Just mention one other item and because it's been a general assumption I think and I think justified to the problem of conformity and uniformity in American life is to encourage more and more minorities and minorities in
our in the arts and in politics and all sorts of other that this will be a way to encourage people to be themselves small. As you know common accusations talk that at least I'm still against this country. This is a country of the tyranny of the majority and a synonym for conformity. And this is one of the commonest and most enthusiastically made complaints by intellectuals all over the world against the United States as a nation conformist. If you live in a state and you discover that it is just about the only thing on which Americans are able to agree. Name the conformists. But when you come down to the specific conformity there are many problems. I would suggest that the multiplication groups the groups
which conform to norms which is. Contemporaneous with the rise of minorities in the multiplication of minority groups that have the problem of the pressure of conformity. I would suggest rather that the pressure of conformity tends to be the size of the group the larger the group. An American man one that involves certain make certain implications about what they expect to do them to a certain expectation but those expectations are much vaguer and larger and less clearly defined than the expectations of an American. But if I get down to a category as I was also a professor and a professor of history and so on the pressure of conformity increases with the smallness of the group
and the multiplication of smaller groups. The problem of conformity to the problem of conformity and one of the odd things certain groups the groups which which live on protest Hells Angels and motorcycling groups and others which can come back full circle and can only express their form and express their individuality because all of the resources. I think this is a this is a problem and it's conceivable that if we are in quest of a way of discovering what each of us really affectively we have what used to be called the tyranny of the majority. That is if
we have but forcible conformity rather than a more rigid and enforceable conformity smaller groups. I wonder what does it turn now to Professor Simon. Not necessarily change the subject but see if she wants to go on with this or introduce some other kinds of ideas that will come back to this individual experience. I'm not sure of the comment that I'm going to arrange to go directly to the point you're talking about but I think perhaps they do. The first comment I suppose is more of a question and the problem. Unless I misunderstood you right you are suggesting what you were saying last night was that the mass communications
and mass communications particularly to fragment was to exaggerate differences within the society and I had always thought and I think that's probably one of the major pumpkins of the mass media or mass communication is to bring about a kind of various groups and this is to serve to emphasize similarities and in the sense of oneness and in fact historically there was a great deal of emphasis on difference. The New Englander versus seven families versus the emphasis on quantification in the society rather than pointing to differences among us have served to kind of homogenous. Like if I'm wrong I'd like you to talk to that. But then I want to make one other point which again I
think is in the form of the question. And when it comes to your concept of community of norms or the concept of the consuming community I'm somewhat I don't understand a concept that is because I doubt that when people who buy the same products or who are the same hero or celebrity or someone think of themselves as being a community that is I buy time detergent for my thing but it never occurs to me to think that all the people who buy the same kind of nature in our community of which are members so I think that the concept of a community of norms. We have people who share
certain identities system. I don't think any evidence would suggest that because people purchase the same product. Thank you thank you. Well first of all the first question of whether the multiplication of media emphasizes similarities or differences. The first question now I think that in the first place this will be perhaps the most accurate way of putting it. The media emphasize there is no deceiving. Now I think it is also likely that the similarities and differences.
People with people are aware probably of being Americans than they were before there were the media and there are also being members of certain separate groups. I was suggesting and developing the notion. One country that was not that I was not meaning to suggest that the media do not draw people together in the media are entirely divisive. But I was suggesting a kind of function which is performed by the media which have been very difficult to have been performed by any agency before because the concepts were not there. I don't think the century that you would have a businessman I don't think that you would you would have written for example thinking of himself we have had his autobiography and text
you know that or that he thought of them as a business executive Just for example. I'm suggesting then is that the convergence of not just in the presence of the media then the media with an opportunity to ask the question the question isn't for them to go into and I'm not sure that we can measure that anyway. It's not necessary for my purposes to deny that the people together. To them this is the same evidence of the separateness which is not possible because of the creation of these
categories which had not even of the people earlier times and which are the primary for different kinds of classes of different kinds of groups to which I can be a member. That would have been the case in 89. Probably wouldn't conceivably have thought of myself as a second generation immigrant. Just for example which sort of depends on the group as intensity of feeling.
Very good example of this is religion statistics of the study which I would think for example of what you can do which is an excellent source that can understand it would have been inconceivable. The question would have been whether a person was an adherent of a religion a belief to his environment or his neighborhood or something that's in the business I think would have been.
Series
Man and the multitude
Episode
Daniel J. Boorstin discussion, part one
Producing Organization
University of Illinois
WILL Illinois Public Media
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-qj77z160
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-qj77z160).
Description
Episode Description
This program presents the first part of a discussion of Daniel J. Boorstin's lecture, "The Culture of Communications."Additional speakers include Rita Simon, James W. Carey, H.E. Gulley, all of University of Illinois; and Fred S. Siebert, Michigan State University.
Series Description
A lecture series commemorating the centennial of the University of Illinois.
Date
1967-10-31
Topics
Social Issues
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:33
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: University of Illinois
Producing Organization: WILL Illinois Public Media
Speaker: Gulley, Halbert E.
Speaker: Boorstin, Daniel J. (Daniel Joseph), 1914-2004
Speaker: Simon, Rita J. (Rita James), 1931-2013
Speaker: Carey, James W.
Speaker: Siebert, Fred S. (Fred Seaton), 1902?-1982
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-41-9 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:35
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Man and the multitude; Daniel J. Boorstin discussion, part one,” 1967-10-31, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qj77z160.
MLA: “Man and the multitude; Daniel J. Boorstin discussion, part one.” 1967-10-31. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qj77z160>.
APA: Man and the multitude; Daniel J. Boorstin discussion, part one. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-qj77z160