Dear Mom,

How many times, in your lifetime, have you heard the phrase, "Knowledge is Power". Probably, like me, too many to count. After the Baudrillard reading this week, "The Illusion of the End", I'm beginning to ask, "In what dose?". Baudrillard suggests in his Acceleration/Deceleration theory that we are being bombarded by information and yet with all this knowledge, we have become increasingly apathetic. Significance requires reflection but the acceleration process makes this almost impossible. All the information and "simulacra" that bombard us everyday are moving at such a rate that image and reality are collapsed and simulated images become reality. Baudrillard calls this space a Hyper Reality where there is no original copy, everything is a simulation of reality. As all this information hits us, and we absorb it in our hyper reality, deceleration occurs. It is impossible for a human being to react to all the simulacra, or to feel that tactile shock everytime an image affects her or him. To counteract this attack, we withdraw, we become apathetic, we are neutralized.

I see the vast array of knowledge we are presented with as more of a false conciousness where we, the people, see this limitless supply of information all for the taking. With all of the information we have access to, we can't possibly think that anyone is hiding anything from us... right? Knowledge is no longer power when it is readily available on your front step each morning, nor is it power when millions of people hear it while they eat supper every night. I believe knowledge is only powerful when it's something we find out for ourselves, when we feel we have the responsibility to do something about it, because 500 million other people don't know yet.