Intensity impact of its escalation on people, society and the environment

The author focuses on what seems to be the only constant in virtually all forms of media, electronic or paper: the accelerating escalation of intensity. There is no precedent, save perhaps in pitch battle, for the astonishing bit rates entering the human mind and emotions through eyes, ears and even noses. Yet, despite the awesome intensity of stimuli to which we, from the tenderest age, are daily exposed in movies, in computers, in television soon to become digital high definition television, in the content and delivery systems of music, in ever more glossy magazines, in the raw magnetism of best selling books, in robotic toys and dolls, in the ever more sophisticated techniques of marketing and advertising, precious little is said about the human, societal and environmental impact of such intense and increasing exposure. Only when an off-the-wall event, like the hospitalizing of more than 700 children after watching a TV cartoon, do people belatedly take notice. What then is happening to us as we interact with ever more powerful technical amplifiers and prostheses? What is happening to our relationships, to our sensitivities, to our abilities to be moved, to our abilities to perceive? The conventional wisdom is that we, as naked human beings, are more because we are in command of ever more potent technics? But is this really the case? A teenager begins to go deaf under the onslaught of sidewalk cracking sound from his multi-hundred watt car audio. Is he more or is he less? People ride the subways, buses, planes and trains, each in their own walled off world with headphones, a world increasingly devoid of person to person contact. Are we more or are we less? Precipitated by the massive emissions of greenhouse gases by way of sheer numbers X per capita consumption, global warming, with the potential for catastrophic cooling should be a significant item on the backburners of most people's minds. But under the incessant intensifying barrage of media whose primary message is consume 'till you drop, it is not.