La Comunicació de masses i el discurs privat. Observacions al llenguatge postmodern

Mass communication and private speech

The spread of technological progress which began in the 50's and 60's has not only transformed our available knowledge but has also transformed people's mentality. It is too early yet to know the real significance of these changes. Television and the information super-highway are now in the same early stages as printing was in the sixteenth century. Yet they are revelatory of the nature of the advances that have been made. The transformation may be so profound and may entail a change of such magnitude that one day, it will be seen that, in the middle of the twentieth century, there appeared a new cultural era, different from the modern era, and inseparable from electronic language. Nevertheless, man will remain tied to his self-conscious and subjective nature which will manifest itself, at least, in the realm of discourse that we call private, as opposed to the public, media discourse. In this change, postmodernity will prove to be one more milestone, a step we will have climbed with horror or enthusiasm for what it is worth, but, in the end, a step up. It will not have negated the profound structure of man, who is a complex being, macle up of memories and desires, contentious, problematic and radical, whose naturally strong capacity for thought feeds upon crisis.