THE DIGITAL AGE. THE AGE OF AMERICA.

Youth as energy and fixed machines-----Mobile machines ---Third Age as a Weapon

Atomic Bomb---Household appliances ---- Pc, video camera ----Smart weapons.

1944-------------------1971---------------Crash. 2001----2004----?
In the graph, the III Cycle of electronic machines is ruled by America. It started in World War II when the 1st computer, Eniac was used to make atomic bomb; followed by a long middle age of peaceful consumption of electronic gadgets that ended in a war age based on smart weapons.

The young, energetic age: Atomic bombs and fixed TVs.
In the III Cycle, again electr(on)ic energy is used first as a pure form of energy with 2 dual, positive and negative arrows: Eniac, the 1st computer is used to calculate the 1st atomic bomb, the purest form of electronic energy, latter evolved in relatively peaceful Nuclear Electric plants to fulfil the electric needs of machines. Thus, the main use for electronics will be first the creation of pure energy (13% of American electricity goes into manufacturing nuclear bombs) and pure information (IBM develops computers for the accountancy departments of big corporations). When World War II ended, electric home appliances become the hottest market item, while electrical trains in railroads and subways substitute diesel machines. Meanwhile information machines cross the last threshold of form, becoming visual information with the TV-set. In 1936 the BBC begins its first emission of black and white Television; in 1937 the electron microscope is discovered. Machines are still huge mainframes and fixed studio cameras. Meanwhile TVs replace the electric radio in the altar that controls our collective mind, as radio had replaced the printed ‘Book of God’, the Bible. In the industrial age it is not the message, its truth and positive meaning for mankind, what determines the success of a certain ideology; but the mechanical medium, which carries it and constantly increases its simultaneity. Now it arrives to a worldwide audience of humans that believe a visual information that paradoxically degrades the quality of the message and the mind of its ‘human receptors’. Thus the Neo-Paleolithic age based in violent, visual information, as people increasingly forget the ethical messages of their human, verbal, temporal, survival minds …
Maturity.  The age of mobile chips and video cameras.
‘Metal minds’ also evolved during those 3 ages from verbal, electric systems to visual, electronic gadgets. The brains and eyes of machines, computers and cameras were first huge, fixed machines: mainframes or cameras fixed to television studios. Then as they reduced their cumbersome size and became movable, an age of peaceful mass consumption of PCs and video cameras started. Chips and transistors lowered the size and costs of electronic gadgets and computers that expand throughout the entire economic ecosystem. So, it came the mass consumption age of cheap, automated, mobile electronic machines, (videos, TVs, cameras, PCs, mobiles), very complex metal minds, simple to use by increasingly degraded human minds. Then IBM lost his throne to Intel, the discoverer of the chip and Microsoft, the creator of the software for those PCs.
Meanwhile those PCs brought about the final evolution of metal-information into e-money. So, money is no longer a bit of soft, informative metal, as coins or paper-money were (gold standard), but ‘bits of information in the mind of computerized machines’. This transformation of money into pure computer information rushed all company-Mothers to adopt the mind of machines, the chip, as the main worker in all digital and financial tasks, causing the obsolescence of white collar workers worldwide . So in the 80s a wave of unemployment among secretaries and office clerks automated the management of companies.  Now we live in the age of information that becomes a constant fashion, as it was to speak of energy in the XIX C., during the age of machine bodies.
Third Age. The age of smart weapons.
Finally, today in synergy with electronic war machines, mass media has become violent in its content, degrading the ethics of mankind that now accepts war as if it were a video game under the influence of those images. While an electronic Great Brother watches us in airports and streets. So electronic machines are no longer symbiotic to man but are becoming increasingly ‘hostile’ to us…
Indeed, when all men have their VCR, camera, mobile and Pc, finally it arrived the 1st crisis of overproduction of chips in 1991. And Mr. Bush implemented a splendid little war. Thus America inaugurated with Desert Storm the age of electronic wars at the same time that violent television reached its peak. While in the Muslim world Al-Jazeera TV plays a parallel role, fostering the violence of a 3rd World increasingly in the hands of inquisitorial religions. It is the beginning of  III World War… It is the age of smart weapons, the warrior age of computers. Since after the NASDAQ crash of electronic industries in 2000 and the fall of the W.T.C. by violent Islam terrorists, an age of warfare and smart weapons has started. And if the cycle of industrial war continues as usual, that age will last 36 years and create the first Terminators; robotic weapons that might extinguish mankind, as the baroque prophets of Hollywood prophesise. Since manage those increasingly automated armies, Internet networks with center in the Pentagon are becoming widely used in the control of weapon systems, from atomic depots to automated gun machines and satellites.

2. The Human generations. The 3 ages of America.
Einstein, discoverer of electronics (photoelectric effect) and promoter of the Atomic Bomb; Gates, reproducer of electronic programs, the richest man of America and the Bush family, lobbyists of electronic wars, complete the 3 generations of the electronic cycle of American World power.

 

 

After I W.W. the dollar shared with the Mark and the Pound the International currency status and America became the country with the bigger GNP, starting also in the cultural world a new cycle as the World Power and dominant culture of the XX C. with 3 ages and 3 human generations:
- The tough founder generation of Rockefellers and Roosevelts, who conquered the World in II W.W. We respect those Americans because, as in the German cycle, the epic Founders were ethical people who twice saved Europe of the German death. In art it is the age of epic films (Westerns).
- The reproductive generation of the post-war age expanded peaceful consumption of electronic gadgets. It lasted till 1971-73, when the chip and a new type of money (electronic money) appeared. It is the classic, sensorial age of the American culture and the realist age of ‘cinema verite’ that gives birth to a pleasure seeking revolution during the 60s and more humane attitudes towards the rest of the world. Americans were then imitated by the entire planet as their culture reproduced worldwide.
It is the age of the ‘catholic, social-loving’ president Kennedy, of the black activists, Malcolm X and Luther murdered by animetal believers that plunged America back again into Go(l)d beliefs.
- Since once the American classic age and the 60s revolution ends, the massive reproduction of electronic money by Wall street, of smart weapons by the Pentagon and violent movies by Hollywood, brings about the spiritual decay of the Americans: They become violent, simplistic, cynical; or they return with ‘angst’ to the past, in a recurrent religious process observed in previous industrial cycles, called ‘Revivalism’ that has brought back Protestant and Jewish fundamentalism. But Gold, the ‘business of America’ the black hole of power, higher the ‘evident politicians’. So in politics the go(l)d culture hired a Hollywood actor called Reagan, who opened the way to war propaganda with his TV speeches, as Hitler did with Radio in the II cycle. Now a dynasty of weapon’s lobbyists, Bush Sr. and Jr., ‘manufacture’ the first ‘splendid, little’ electronic wars (Dessert Storm I, II), hiring the mercenary US army to the biggest financial world power. In mainstream electronic art, (film, TV), once the ethic and aesthetic values of mankind are gone, we enter the present ‘Baroque’ period in which the values of money (greed, consume) and weapons (death, revenge), impose themselves as the correct behaviour of all film heroes. It is the extinctive generation of war-loving lazy, ignorant Americans, which impose their monetary and military power worldwide. Neofascism and the militarization of the economy announce the end of American freedoms. It is also the beginning of the robotic wars that transform peaceful electronic gadgets into smart weapons and robots. In art it is the age of violent, extinctive art, of Terminator movies that foresee a future, no longer of technological symbiosis between men and machines, but of life extinction by smart weapons. Now Americans are despised and feared as their indifference to human life inside and outside America becomes notorious: death penalties, denial of climatic change, Iraq massacres, New Orleans disaster, etc. Thus, the baroque, 3rd age of the electronic culture completes with the present war generation the age of America, which is also a neofascist age that will wreck American wealth and freedom. Since after the baroque, 3rd informative age of a society, it comes the age of death, which means a fascist, war age in which all freedoms are curtailed. So as Spengler or Orwell observed in the 20s in their master works, ‘The decline of the West’, and ‘1984’, the end of the XX C. means the end of the American Democracy, converted into a neo-fascist state, similar to fascist Germany, ruled by military industries and war politicians.  Indeed, today the United States are no longer a real democracy, a status it achieved in brief periods of its history and in limited regions, notably in the slave free West and North during the XIX century Jacksonian democracy, when citizens could ‘issue money’ through small state banks, could carry weapons and voted laws in local assemblies; and hence they controlled the law, weapons and money, the 3 languages of power. Today this no longer happens, since the government cannot invent money (Deficit Zero laws), while companies’ lobbies control the law, created to favor the expansion of its machines and weapons. America has been for most of its history ruled as a Free Market Democracy by the companies with more economical power: it was first governed by gunboat companies from England. When North-American gunboat companies became more efficient that the British ones they became the rulers of America. Their stockratic owners defied the British shipping companies (Boston Tea party) and displaced them in the American independence war. They hold power in America for almost a century, till a new top predator land machine, the railroad, reached higher profits. It was a better machine able to displace people inland; and so it was reproduced to conquer the continent. It paid his best lawyer, Mr. Lincoln, a lobbyist of the Illinois Railroad Company to provoke war against the South that used rival gunboat companies to take cotton to Europe. And it passed laws that made the railroad barons of the age the owners of America (railroad act). It will be the age of robber barons. The owners of railroads were the owners of America. Then in the XX century, the car, became the most re=produced machine of the age and its companies controlled the law. In Europe they put Hitler on place, which made the top predator car (the tank) the backbone of German industry. In the United States, 'what it was good for General Motors became good for America'. Then after the war, the evolution of mental machines (radio, TVs, computers) took over cars and those who owned those mental machines became the stockratic owners of America. It is the age of Jewish power. And so America has become concerned with the wars of Israel against the Islamic culture. Finally in the future, those who will own computer networks an robot companies will be the last animetals in power, because robots will take over as living species that no longer need the help of human beings.