obama's media-history awareness
Today, Obama held a townhall meeting in Strasbourg, France. He doing his first European tour after attending the G-20 summit in London. I notice that some of this remarks sound like somebody has been paying attention to communication and culture theory:
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You've served as a center of industry and commerce, a seat of government and education, where Goethe studied and Pasteur taught, and Gutenberg imagined his printing press.So it's fitting, because we find ourselves at a crossroads as well, all of us, for we've arrived at a moment where each nation and every citizen must choose at last how we respond to a world that has grown smaller and more connected than at any time in its existence.
You know, we've known -- we've known for a long time that the revolutions in communications and technology that took place in the 20th century would help hold out enormous promise for the 21st century, the promise of broader prosperity and mobility, of new breakthroughs and discoveries that could help us lead richer and fuller lives. But the same forces that have brought us closer together have also given rise to new dangers that threaten to tear our world apart, dangers that cannot be contained by the nearest border or the furthest ocean.
