Overview

The years since its publication in 1991 have proven this book's central thesis-that our digitized, technological culture is controlled by five principles of language and reality that were first enunciated during the fifth century BCE in the city-states of Greece as the basis of the art of rhetoric: Words are toolsImages are realInformation is powerChange is inevitableTruth is relativeThese rhetorical principles have enlivened Western Culture ever since, and they flow into our time in the guise of conflicting concepts of history, politics, education, ethics and aesthetics. These principles shape our innermost thoughts about living well in a world that depends on technological innovation and the embodiment of theory in products as well as in practice. They invest our art and literature with the archetypal themes and symbols by which we portray the most rudimentary emotions. They control the processes of decision-making by which we choose the goods we consume, the leaders we follow, the things we study, and the opinions we believe or doubt. They give rise to the fundamental concepts and methods of our political, cultural, and educational institutions. Most important, as recent history demonstrates, the sophistication of our culture is a Faustian bargain of epic proportions that is played out in all the realms of self-consciousness, self-expression, and self-realization that are defined by rhetoric

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9781090161147

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