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[HAIP] CIVILiZATION

Or do adult adults exist?

HYIP

It’s not even a word. It’s an abbreviation for High Yield Investment Program, which means a high risk high profit, supposedly, investment.

Hype

Wild and flashy valuing style over substance at a breakneck pace; extravagant and intensive publicity, including deceit; emotional excitement, etc.

From the boundlessness of the Internet

“I’m 35, sometimes I still think there are some real ‘adults’ somewhere. Adult adults”.

Humour online

What we are going to call Black Swan is an event that refers to three following characteristics:

“First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Seldon’s crisis is a fictional socio-historical phenomenon described in Isaak Asimov’s science fiction novels. The crisis is a part of psychohistory and refers to what seems to be a disastrous social and political situation, which, if attempted to be conquered, will leave the only one possible and inevitable way of action.

From the Internet

“Dunning – Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence. <…> The cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability and from an external misperception in people of high ability; that is, “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others. <…> People with substantial, measurable deficits in their knowledge or expertise lack the ability to recognize those deficits and, therefore, despite potentially making error after error, tend to think they are performing competently when they are not”.

Chapter 0

Those of you who don’t have the habit of thumbing through the first few pages automatically (much as I regret it, I do it myself sometimes) have certainly noticed a large number of epigraphs. Normally, writers set the stage for a book or a new chapter with just one or two quotations. It makes sense because one statement is usually enough to convey the basic message or a general idea of the book or its part. But for some reason, I find it appropriate in this case to spring a few very different epigraphs at once on my readers. They don’t even relate to each other because in this book we are not going to flow from one idea to another or from a fact to its explanation slowly; we will not move gradually from a statement to its confirmation and conclusions. After we force our way through the wilds of obstacles we (people) have been creating for ourselves for the last 120 years or more, you will make your own conclusions.

Let me explain more about the title. I’m sure you have noticed that the popularity and knownness of any news, fact, event, person or phenomenon in the modern world are not necessarily associated with the importance of this event or information on the realm of the whole world or at least a significant part of it. Moreover, in the great majority of cases, those events don’t even have any crucial effect on the lives of people who are interested in them. In most cases, those who most actively “spread the world”, personally do not even care about those events in terms of their actual interests in life, which is a unique feature of our era. Besides, the phenomenon of modern “hype” is that anyone can be the “spreader” of information without distorting it, which is crucial. I have intentionally given two definitions of what we pronounce as [haip]. They are both applicable.

You can object that there are different kinds of hype: for example, commercial, entertaining and, let’s say, spontaneous one. But that’s an illusion. It has become so easy to spread information effortlessly and without distortions (which, again, is very important and we are going to discuss it later) that any opportunity of building hype is immediately being used by those who know how to make a profit from it. Suffice it to say, 99% of people do. When you share information on social media or even post something personal, you hope to get as many “likes” and positive comments as possible. This is your personal profit. Let’s be honest: I don’t think that many of you, my readers, would spread information that will potentially cause strong negative feelings among most of your followers. We will discuss information and how it spreads in the next chapters.

Let’s go back to the title. In my opinion, we are gradually losing the ability to differentiate and analyze. Strange as it may seem, it is a threat to the modern world order, and it is probably as dangerous as the possibility of nuclear world war in the future. Modern hype is a phenomenon that starts to replace analysis and critical thinking. What’s worse is that sometimes hype can become the direct cause of actual changes in our life, to the extent of losing it. This is not just a theoretical conclusion. We will go back to this later too and discuss it in detail. For now — welcome to the planet Earth at the dawn of Hype Civilization.

Now about the epigraphs.

The first epigraph is humorous. Almost. I have chosen it because it is not a “classic” type of humour even though it seems so primitive. I think you will agree that most modern jokes have basically been known since the era of Renaissance (I mean, conceptually). For example, if we replaced some modern words with the older ones, appropriate for the last century, most of our jokes would have been very well understood a hundred years ago. But not in this case, I guess. Let me explain why. Our contemporaries don’t need to think twice to understand the meaning of it. But a hundred years ago nobody at the age of 35, healthy and legally competent, could think of being “not mature enough” or “not grown” or anything else like that. Everyone, regardless of gender and origin, had a lot of duties and responsibilities and had to take risks since they were 13—15 years old.

One of the reasons for this “funny” phenomenon (of adults looking around for other adults) lies in a considerably higher level of communication and the development of economic and social institutions. That is why in modern society an individual responsibility for the words, decisions and even actions went down to a very insignificant level. Sounds like it is better to illustrate it with examples. Say, two hundred years ago an unfortunate joke about a lady could become the reason for a duel. It could be a direct threat to life. In the lower class society they would just beat the man half to death. A professional’s mistake could lead to the loss of harvest, no means of existence, consequently, absolute poverty or death from starvation. A long time ago there was no “community service” or “conditional sentence” for a crime related to work. A modern teenager (as well as an adult, actually) in a modern “civilized” society understands that their “minor” offences will not compromise their health or life, whereas just a hundred or two years ago punishments were much heavier, and almost all of them were a real threat to one’s life even if it was not about a death penalty. I don’t know what the crime statistics looked like two hundred years ago and I concede that there are probably no significant changes in terms of numbers. But we aren’t here to discuss it. In the modern world with its insurance, bank loans, social services, hospitals and penal systems, chances of early death or losing family and children or all your money are much lower than before. This state of affairs has definitely left its mark on the mindset of the vast majority of the population. The reduced severity of consequences — the lower price a modern individual has to pay for making a wrong decision — has led the situation where adult people need someone who is “more adult” than themselves, and the number of these immature adults keeps growing. The difference between the consequences following the decisions made by kindergartens’ staff and employees of government institutions or large companies is fading. Our actions become more and more determined by our bosses, the state, or the opinions of the majority of people around us. Our intelligence does not even have to take part in making decisions anymore. That is how hype becomes one of the tools for making decisions. We will discuss it in the next chapters.

I’ve taken the next epigraph from a book by Nassim Taleb, the writer I appreciate a lot. I think, if you are familiar with his books and theories, you might have already guessed about the reasons why I have chosen this quotation. If you are not, I strongly recommend you to have a look at Mr. Taleb’s books to have a better understanding of the fact that our reality had been sustainably substituted for the last 150 years. Anyway, it is not necessary to know Nassim Taleb’s books to read mine and discuss things here. I will try to avoid direct references and explain some of his statements when it’s inevitable. Now this is the case.

The term “Black swan” is a Latin expression. Its oldest reference is found in the ancient Roman poet Juvenal’s phrase “a good person is as rare as a black swan” (Latin: rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno). It had been believed that swans could only be white until the Dutch sea expedition captained by Willem de Vlamingh found a population of black swans in the Western Australia in 1697.

Even though this metaphor had long been known in philosophy, it was Taleb who started to use it to indicate rare and unexpected events that cause groundbreaking effect. “Black swans” can be not only negative events. They can also be super unpredictable “lucks”.

Taleb describes a few types of fallacies that can lead to one’s excessive confidence in their ability to predict and analyze the future:

Narrative fallacy: it is a tendency to trust emotionally presented stories more than just statistics and facts.

Ludic fallacy: a tendency to apply game theory to real life.

Retrospective fallacy: a genuine belief that future events can be successfully predicted if the prediction is based on the analysis of the past.

So, the concept of “black swan” is that there are events that could never have predicted or pre-analyzed by anyone. I would like to point out that it is very important to understand and embrace this idea for our further considerations. This idea also includes the point that everything that is happening might lead to disastrous changes. Why disastrous? Because it can result in serious changes in life patterns and social and political traditions of the whole society along with declining living standards for most people and the population decline. Isn’t it a total disaster from the point of view of a typical modern representative of the “middle class”? As for the third part of the “Black swan” definition — I mean, pseudo-explanations and pseudo-predictions — well, this is one of the foundation stones of successful hype in the modern world. It is the most dangerous one too. Why? Because there is nothing behind it, apart from pure fiction, fake, making up pseudo-realistic reasons and fitting them with modern evaluation systems.

The third epigraph might seem irrelevant to you or even totally inappropriate because it is from “outer space”. That quotation belongs to a modern classic science fiction author, loved and appreciated by millions, including me — Isaac Asimov. Of course, the quotation is taken from one of his science fiction novels, which I consider his best. Well, we are not here to talk about our literary preferences. I have noticed a long time ago that some writers (of course, good ones), designing alternative possibilities of the human’s civilization’s evolution, sometimes make the way the societies in their books develop, much more logical and comprehensible than the real humanity does. This observation (which seemed extremely interesting to me but was probably nothing else than a flight of my imagination) made me think of it for quite some time. I made a conclusion that, if we compared, for example, a documentary about the human history with a really good professional film based on a novel about “the alternative development of human race” written by a talented science-fiction author (let’s say, Asimov or Heinlein), we would have been really disappointed by the script about the real history of human civilization. It would have looked embarrassingly amateurish to us.

It would have been consisted of far-fetched and baseless unexpected events. It would have been full of weird individuals who had somehow managed to get enough power to affect the whole world, etc. I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed “discords” like this before, in low-quality movies or pulp fiction books. It happens when, for instance, a minor, insignificant character, without any potential or hidden resources, suddenly turns out to have some super skills, and the entire plot makes a U-turn.

If we compare, we can see it. But in reality we don’t perceive our life and the whole human history as something irrational and full of contradictions. Do you know why? The third part of the “black swan” definition explains it perfectly. It is our human nature that makes us come up with explanations of something afterwards, when it had already happened. It is our human nature that makes any event completely explicable and even predictable after some time, even though it came as a total surprise for everyone. We have made excellent progress in correcting history with the benefit of hindsight, and this process starts from the second day after the event. As time goes, “scientists” build up harmonious theories with perfectly explained “sequences” of events which inevitably “were bound to lead this result sooner or later”. An ordinary individual looks at all those long centuries through the prism of schoolbooks on history and doesn’t really want to analyze or criticize them. They assume it is true because it was “studied” and “proven” by many scientists. As a matter of fact, one can hardly say that history is a science that can play a key role in someone’s life or affect one’s living standards in the modern society. It is practically important only if you want to become a historian. The phenomenon of “inventing explanations” has become one of the main working tools of Hype civilization.

We will look into it more in the chapter about information. After that, we will try and investigate the current state of affairs in terms of crisis. Can what is happening today be regarded as a global crisis for our civilization? Is there the only one way out of it — the one Asimov told us about? You might say, there are always a few ways out of any crisis. You’re right. But I don’t regard “any way” as acceptable. I believe it should only be the way that would allow the civilization to keep the existing models of social and political organization in their current form (or with only slight alterations) and stick to the basic humanistic underlying premises and values. I think I have said enough about the reasons why I had chosen that epigraph. Let’s move on.

The idea of the last epigraph threads through the whole book. Conscious incompetence is one of the key reasons for modern crises everywhere, in very different fields. The conscious incompetence does not just exist; we are also consciously cultivating it every day of our lives. I am not talking about what specialization to choose and what to become. The situation looks more or less alright in this sense. Looks! It seems that, whatever field we take, it is good for a specialist to have a very narrow area of expertise and a very focused specialization. We believe it makes their level of expertise in this particular area even higher. It does look like a positive trend from the perspective of individual fields, especially high-tech ones. But if you think of it in terms of the society’s adaptability and development in general, you will find nothing good in this tendency. I will give you some examples. You’ve probably heard of so-called “divorcement from reality” common for scientists carried away by their work. The image of this overly enthusiastic scientist was played up in movies and books many times. In our time this image is closely associated with IT specialists. Have you noticed that? Other fields are catching up too, especially those ones where it is necessary to absorb oneself deeper into some vague concepts. Plus, the number of such fields is only growing. Therefore, more and more people feel like they belong to special communities, “not for everyone”. Is it bad and why?

As we have already mentioned above, an individual’s responsibility for the decisions made has significantly reduced over time. For example, there are no more crucial social activities that people should necessarily do together, like, building a fence around the village or choosing the best commander who will lead the troops or conduct peace negotiations with neighbours, etc. In our time it is enough to simply pay taxes. The state, represented by the society, provides every individual with a set of options that does not require any time or effort spent. An individual only has to work and pay taxes. Besides, “dedicated specialists”, especially if they’re real experts in a focused area, are very well paid, so they can do whatever they want in their personal life. Very often they are not interested in social life at all and do not participate in it at any level. They consciously choose to live this way. They are actually not interested. They do understand that they have a very vague idea of this “social life”. This is conscious incompetence in societal issues that do not affect anyone’s comfort. There is another part of the population, much more numerous one. They went much further and now they cultivate this social incompetence. They are people whose life cycle looks approximately like this: work — sofa — beer — TV. Their approach is a bit different. They are convinced that the state owes them. According to them, the state should guarantee low prices, available jobs, social care and everything else that seems fair for them to have. First of all, the state should not interfere with them. Interestingly, they genuinely believe that only “they”, “up there”, some mystical characters, are responsible for everything. “They” who owe them are basically everyone — from a policeman to the president. They don’t want to bother and think about how exactly “they” should provide them all those things and what resources to use. They just should. The most contradictory thing about this sort of people is that they are seemingly “interested” in politics and social life. They go to elections and have “their own” opinion. They are very certain about what “they owe” ordinary people. But as soon as you try to talk to them about how to do things and how social mechanisms work, this person will immediately come into his or her favourite position, like “we are small people, we don’t know anything, but they should know because they’re up there”. This incompetence is both conscious and cultivated. These two categories of people are very different but they are toxic for society in the same way: they are easily affected by the hype in the fields of their incompetence. Actually, the hype is only possible due to such a large amount of incompetent people presented in our days.

I think I have said enough about the epigraphs. I’ll be happy if some of you will read the books I took them from. Now I’d like to tell you about the reasons why the original idea of this book came into my mind. I’ve been feeling for quite some time already that the world as we know it (or as we seem to know it) will not last for a long time. By this I mean, first of all, social and political order and, probably, the structure of the economy. Fortunately, it is not about the survival of the human race yet. Here comes the question — how shall we classify the current state of affairs? Is it a crisis, which, according to Asimov, has only one correct solution allowing to save what we have in the same form we have it? Is it a “black swan” — an event that has already happened or is coming soon but we are not ready to face the consequences? When I say “an event” I don’t mean something that happens only once, like the Chernobyl disaster or a volcano eruption. No. “Black swan” might be happening for years and nobody will even suspect that some serious process is taking place. Later, when we compare the before and after situations we will clearly see that the changes have been dramatic, and everything has become totally different. For example, look at the world map before the World War I and four years later… Remember that just a couple of weeks before the war started, nobody had been predicting it. It’s a classic example of a Black swan. Of course, there are many historians who would object to this. According to loads of historical studies written by loads of scientists, everything was very predictable and the war was bound to happen. The problem is that all those studies were made dozens of years after the event. But when you read various analytics and evaluations of the current situations written by people who lived in that time — luckily, there are many sources to learn from — you will hardly find any significant difference between the information field 10 years before the war and 10 weeks before it. There are aspects thoroughly studied by financial experts and economists, not by historians. They have also come to the conclusion that the First World War came as a total surprise for the global economy. Doesn’t it sound weird? So, unlike the Second World War, which was clearly very predictable, the First one is a classic example of a “negative Black swan”. But “Black swans” can “positive too”. For example, look at the market of medications for improving potency before and after Viagra was launched onto the market. Take into account that Viagra’s effect was a side effect discovered in the process of developing a totally different medicine.

What I am trying to say here? I would like you to think about the possibility of being in the middle of another “Black swan” right now. When it is completed, the world order will have a totally different form. Maybe we are in the middle of a crisis, which can have only one solution that will allow us to save ourselves, remaining the same civilization as we are now. It doesn’t mean though that we will like this solution even if we find it. Under these circumstances, it seems to me it is worth spending some time on analysis. There aren’t many people in the world who do not feel the increasing speed of technological development, especially in the last twenty years. It is hard not to see many processes change rapidly in our everyday life. Alterations in routines implies adaptation to the new ones. Here I’ve a got a very logical question. Can our body physically catch up with the speed of changes of everything? Can our minds adapt so quickly in terms of physiology? Our brain seems very capable of it, doesn’t it? Even elderly people learn how to use smartphones and computers, and life expectancy has substantially increased. But it is not as simple as that. I might not be far from the truth if I say that you don’t have an idea about at least 50% of your laptop or smartphone’s potential. Am I right? As for life expectancy and our health condition, don’t forget about multiple disputes among scientists and medics about genetically modified food and the side effects of medicines. I would say everything is very ambiguous in terms of technology development. But when it comes to the development of the society, it will be end up really unfortunate if we don’t reconsider some modern tendencies and admit that there are dangers we haven’t been aware of before. It can end up with a disaster, and we will believe that we have only been watching the high-tech world develop naturally.

In the following chapters we will talk about how exactly the routine human activities and interactions change in terms of the Advent of Hype civilization. We will also discuss what it can lead to in view of the modern tendencies. I’m sure you won’t be bored. Let’s go!

Chapter 1

Hypermation

Hypermation is an avalanche-like increase of information stream (both verifiable and not) and, at the same time, a gradual depreciation of its quality and trustworthiness combined with the impossibility to differentiate between the truth and lie, manipulations and, as an ultimate goal, atrophy of differentiating abilities in the majority.

Of course, I’ve made up this term and its definition. But it seems to me it reflects the modern information trends perfectly. Let’s remember the beginning of the modern era and try to understand if what we are having today was inevitable or we once had a chance to form a very different field of information.

Let me explain: I am not going to differentiate between the information that is presented to us as news or advertisement, even though it might seem logical to treat these types differently. You will understand why. People had an ability to exchange information somehow from the dawn of the human era. As human society was forming and developing, means of information storage and transfer were changing too. At first, there were only drawings, then handwriting, then printing, etc. For an infinitely long time, only the power-that-be and churches almost entirely possessed the prerogative to spread information. Besides, the information they spread was mostly of a directive nature: laws, regulations and things like that. The ignorance of laws or the failure of their performance has always led to punishments, which for a few thousand years has formed a certain attitude to all widely spread information among ordinary people. The information known to the general public has always been regarded as trusted. More than that, this information used to deserve trust, for real. It would make no sense for an absolute ruler of hierarchs of the only church to spread false information among their subjects. The era of misrepresentation of truth and distortions of the real state of affairs, the time of diplomatic overtures with masses were still a distant future. That is why everyone understood: any information coming from the centralized authorities, temporal or spiritual, was the truth, valid at the moment. On the other hand, every individual is able to become a source of information and spread it as much as he or she can. Obviously, one person’s chances to put something into the public domain were very low. The possibilities were very restricted, and only the powers-that-be could deliver some information to large segments of society. Only very rich people could afford publishing books or anything else and distributing them. Besides, the majority of people were illiterate, which made it simply impossible for them to use any print mass media. Any attempt to “spread the word” implied having a lot of resources. Basically, an average man was able to spread some news only within his place of living where he could personally communicate with people around. Chances were very low that the information spread this way would go any further. At the same time, locally spread information was normally truthful because everyone knew each other and could check it anytime. To be fair, I should mention that local events were actually important only for the locals. The information about something that happened in a small village would rarely leave this village. People hardly ever travelled, and rumours about relatively insignificant events never reached remote settlements. Only “mystical” information was an exception. It was everything that was not related to everyday life: magic, miracles, the appearance of angels before people, etc.). But we are not interested in this type of information. It is not important for our study.

Here we can already make a conclusion: historically, most of the information concerning the main aspects of social and individual’s life, spread by authorities or local sources (which meant it was easy to check) was regarded as truthful by default. The situation remained the same for thousands of years. It seems clear now why it has resulted in the general tendency people still have: to trust any information that becomes known to the general public. So any information spread by means of mass media (any mass media available, depending on the time) has mostly been regarded as trustworthy. 500 years ago it was a message deliverer sent by the ruler. 100 years ago there were mostly newspapers and booklets, and later the radio, TV and the Internet formed the entire mass media we have today. The tendency to trust mass media has not outlived itself completely even by now. You have probably heard many times from your parents or grandparents: “But they told so on TV!” or “It was in the newspaper though!” They probably realized that anything could be shown on TV or printed in the newspaper, but deep down they still had that patch of unconditional trust in mass media, like an echo of “genetic memory of generations”. Let’s say, we divide the “information history” of humanity into two periods: the history of information and the history of hypermation.

By the way, it is very easy to mark the transition from the information to hypermation era. It was when the first private mass media began to appear. There is a popular opinion that “everything” started from the commercial advertisement that had actually existed even thousands of years ago. But I disagree with it, and I will tell you why. Commercial advertisement originated as a type of local information spread locally by individual sellers and craftsmen. They were promoting their goods or services. Whatever they said was easy to verify by visual examination, buying the product or using the service. This process still exists to some extent: a seller is promoting their product and a buyer is free to check if the seller is telling the truth. Of course, there are many more means of promotion now and the advertisement has become so much more sophisticated, but, just as thousands of years ago, it is obvious to the customer: the seller only wants to promote their product. The attitude to this type of information has not basically changed over time.

I believe that the era of “hypermation” started with the first private mass media, which were newspapers. When the first private newspapers started to appear (later came other kinds of private mass media), the society saw a new phenomenon called “editor’s policy”, which was the first step to “Hype civilization”. Of course, the process was slow at the first stages. Of course, there was a time when all really important events took the front pages of all newspapers. There was a time when a reader was sure that newspapers only inform them about the world news but the conclusions are everyone’s personal matter. It was the beginning of a great fallacy. No doubt, there was time (when independent mass media were only beginning to thrive) when the majority of events were presented to the public more or less objectively. But the comments, opinions of the authors of the published materials and illustrations to them were already forming the readers’ point of view. The tendency to trust the information spread via mass media was still more than alive — it was only the beginning in the minds of the audience, newspapers’ owners and employees of the first independent mass media. Besides, mass media were to make a profit for their owners, and it was a high-risk and expensive project to start. Everything they could imagine they would do in order to affect the opinions of their audience we will regard as “micromanipulations”. Even with these “micromanipulations”, mass media were often publicly accused of “distorting the truth”. Sometimes they ended up in the court. But, as I mentioned, it was only the first step, a very small one. Very soon radio stations and magazines of all kinds, including the pioneers of tabloid culture, joined “the army” of mass media. But the tricks they used can still be called “micromanipulations”.

The second stage was marked with the appearance of full-fledged “sponsored” mass media. Sponsored not because they were a commercial failure, but because that was the original idea of their owners. These mass media opened the door for many more opportunities for “correcting” information. Basically, the purpose of these mass media is to form a certain opinion about something important for their owners. Gradually it became easier to do it because for some people it was not necessary to think about the profit this newspaper makes. The owner could easily cover the difference between the profits and the cost of the project. Sponsored mass media gained the opportunity to compete in prices, getting large audiences but not caring about the quality of the materials they published at all. But what we call “tabloids” have made the most significant contribution to the formation of Hype civilization. This form of mass media first appeared more than a century ago and still exists. The methods invented in the 19th century, such as making sensations out of nothing, manipulations with the use of real facts, and blatant lies, have survived until now without changes and moved from newspapers’ pages to the radio, TV, and billboards, and, finally, to the Internet. When the first really influential mass media were only coming into force, some of the insiders could already see the danger in the phenomenon of “tabloids”. The mass media world saw a few attempts to separate “serious mass media” from “tabloids”, and some of those attempts were even successful. There were communities connecting people who believed in the concept that mass media should have high moral principles. There were ethical codes for journalists, etc. It did not (and it certainly couldn’t) lead to the extinction of tabloids. However, those attempts resulted in something very important for us even now. Certain criteria were defined in order to differentiate “reliable sources” from “unreliable”. The definition of the reputation of an information source was introduced. Consumers of information were let know that any information can vary in its variability and that the era of “100% reliable information” had ended. It was time for consumers to choose what information to consume. Speaking of information, I mean the entire flow of that time: news, analytics, and entertainment — everything created by mass media. It is important to take into account that those were blessed times when ordinary people did have a choice, and the choice could be conscious. The criteria were reasonable too. Those days were very different from now when consumers can hardly ever consciously choose something. Today everything is being done in order to exclude free choice. But we will discuss our time later. Now I would like to draw your attention to the fact that there was a small chance to avoid the hype civilization until TV as mass media came up. Why? Because TV opened a channel of “ready-to-use images” in consumers’ minds — massively, every day, for hours. More than that, TV has erased most of the discriminating power of an ordinary person’s mind. Experts have long found out the difference (and danger) between the perception of printed information and TV. If you are really interested, you can easily search online and find many confirmations of it. The mass TV has completely and thoroughly set the direction of information development to hype civilization. There is no more need to think about how exactly the reader will perceive the information. All you need to do now is to form an image. You only need to make sure that the reader (or the “TV watcher”) will see the same picture you want them to see — and your audience is in your pocket!

Here is another note to illustrate what I said above. You have surely read many good books in your life. You liked them. You were entertained by them. Now, can you remember if you have seen as many really good films based on good books? Do you know many films based on books that are as impressive as the original books? Do you know films that convey the message as brightly and metaphorically as you felt it when you were reading? Do you know many films appreciated by the readers of the original book as much as the book? I’m pretty sure you won’t remember many examples. Now think about multiple successful movie projects based on comics. They have brought their producers billions of dollars. There are dozens of these films. They made fortunes. Hundreds of millions of spectators and fans are looking forward to watching sequels. Do you agree that the difference is huge here? Do you see what I am getting at? This phenomenon is easy to explain. When reading a book, every reader creates their own world in their mind. The writer only gives them the basis, the foundation for the images. Therefore, it is hard for a film director to make decisions and interpret the book because he or she will need to “synchronize” with multiple different worlds existing in the imagination of millions of readers. That is why it is rare luck to make a good film based on a book. Here is one more illustration. You probably know that the modern TV interpretations of sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books have become far more popular than classic movies based on the same books, don’t you? The reason is the same. Putting the well-known characters in the modern world, the TV producers create a brand new world but with favourite, familiar characters. It almost guarantees success because the spectators are already positive about their favourite books but at the same time, they will not feel disappointed because of the mismatch between the filmmaker’s idea and their own world they had created in their mind. Making films based on comics appeals to another peculiarity of our perception. Comics filmmakers “animate images”. When we read comics we, sort of, finish them in our imagination. But in this case, everyone will “draw” the same characters who act the same and have the same opportunities, etc. This genre makes it easier for a film director to “synchronize” with the audience’s expectations because everyone has already seen the same pictures.

The mechanism of information perception transition from reading (where you can’t do without creating your own image in your mind) to watching TV (where the images are full and ready-to-consume) is absolutely the same: information — image — interpretation — conclusion — emotion. A non-trained mind switches to the “full-bodied information and entertainment diet” without any effort and starts “consuming” TV on a regular basis. It is physically easier than reading, too, and it’s much more pleasant for the majority of people. Of course, man cannot live on TV alone. The transition to “ready-to-consume information images” wouldn’t have been so easy if there wasn’t a preceding stage that prepared a consumer’s brain by a different form of printed information supply. This form is called “blog” now. But before the Internet, some journalists were trusted to have their own column weekly, for example, in a newspaper. It first appeared in printed mass media, then on the radio and TV. I’m sure many of you still remember. You might even remember the last names of some reporters and the opinions they were expressing in their columns and TV shows. For example, I remember very well my dad and his friends having discussions about some international events and quoting some popular political analysts’ or TV reporters’ statements and opinions as it was the ultimate truth. Of course, you understand that all those “analysts” were not only very professional and, therefore, popular, but they also had a very important goal — to generate so-called “public opinion”. They were really good at it. I was a teenager but I was already involved and started to take into account their opinions as something important. This phenomenon still exists. It has just migrated to the Internet. Now we call these people, “opinion generators”, key opinion leaders (KOLs). They can be either completely independent or work for some company, agency or mass media. There are plenty of opportunities now to make a profit out of one’s popularity. That is another reason why this phenomenon created a very positive environment for the beginning of hypermation in the information space, and the era of Hype has come.