The problem with the prophets of post-modrenism is that they make it sound so exciting, perhaps new technology is for these old men. The pros and cons of the TV, the media, the video have no meaning for the masses about which they write so loudly.

Baudrillard doesn't like the mass media. Like most people with an irritation the cause is always worse for them than for most people, who are able to assimilate it into their everyday lives. It is a problem of values: if we've got sick values they'll cling onto everything, they'll make everything healthy seem sick.

Why does Baudrillard seem so popular, why does he strike a chord with so many people ? Well he doesn't, most people haven't heard of him, so why does he strike a chord with certain social theorists ? For two reasons: he has a new paradigm, which every theorist loves. A theorist will take a new paradigm and try it out like a new car, see how fast it goes, see what new gadgets it has, show it off to his friends who still have an old cars, secondly because the mass media has become an important part of everyday life that needs to be understood. There is a certain sense in which Marx was outdated in his own lifetime by the telegraph, without taking a determinist view of technology.

What can we say about the object, the subject, meaning, information in relation to the media ? Not as much as Baudrillard wants to. Some thoughts:

• We have opinions on topics completely irrelevant to our lives, which people would not have had in past ages: on dingo trials in Australia, on fashion shows in the USSR, on the behaviour of the Indian Government to Sri Lanka, on licensing laws in Scotland, on the bahaviour of US tennis players.
• We have plenty of information available, not just in encyclopaedas or newspapers but on ORACLE, on the news, on quiz shows, current affairs programs, films, comedy shows, gossip columnists, soaps etc.
• We have plenty of diverse information available. Whereas before our sources of information would have been limited to community, members of our family, visitors, papers, now we have many sources of information, from many different points of view.
• TV and video gives us vouroustic experiences, of sex, violence, other families, scenes from the moon, other countries, other cultures. Voyeristic in the sense that we would normally have had to have fulfilled certain obligations, been a certain person (the husband, the priest, the lover, the hero, the murderer, the lunatic) before we could have witnessed the scene.
• We have to have a harder, more dismissive attitude to certain events - there are many 'worthwhile' shows that we have to say 'I have not got the time' to, shows in which someone could have risked their lives or spent the last 20 years putting together, to which you will change channels after five minutes bacause of boredom. The sort of shows on TV every night would formerly only have been available once a year, once a month, it would have been a big event marked by certain ceremonies and celebrations. The other side to being more dismissive is to be more selective, to ask 'do I really want to do/ see/be that ?'
• Authorities of information would still tend to be outside the media, people still believe what their teacher tells them rather than what they read in the papers. However the papers can set an agenda, they could cause the pupil to ask certain questions. However if you are within a certain organ of information (eg a church, a club, a university, a pressure group) if this topic is broached by the media it is the group, more authority is likely to be given to the group.
• The media throws so much at you that it is likely that you will have a lot of information that you don't know where it came from. In this case you will probably have an agnostic attitude to it, for the simple reason you can't believe everything you are told, the best way is to wait and test it by experience if you ever get the chance. (For example suppose we are told the Russians lead a dreadful life full of shortages, we will say, I'll go along with that for the time being', but if we met a Russian we would find out from them if it was really true).
• Our normal life may be haunted by images and messages from the TV - a horror film may cause us to be afraid of going out alone, an advert may make us dissatisfied with our record player, a play may make us look at family situations in a different way. We compare 'real life' with the TV and vice versa.
• We choose a lot of our 'media' saturation. We have to understand the general messages, the general forms (eg they are telling me this because it is a scandal, because it is bizzare, because it happened to an famous person) of the messages but generally we choose whether to watch TV, watch a video, go to the pub, go for a jog. We choose the programmes to watch, the videos to hire, the groups to see, the plays to watch. It is important for us to have a certain amount of self-knowledge about what we like. Perhaps in other times we would have gone along with what the community or family liked and not questioned whether we ourselves liked it.
• The point of consumerism is that we don't have to articulate why we don't like something, we just don't watch it/listen to it/ buy it. Our explanation need be nothing more than "because I don't want to".