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Eric R. Kay's avatar

I think you'd like my third novel, Above Dark Waters. It's about an AI Therapy company, but they use brainwave reading (like in new EEG earbuds) to precisely know how well the ad did and use generative AI to customize ads to be irresistible.

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David E. Rockett's avatar

Let's grant that from the late 194os, 1950s & early 1960s the Media, per the influence of the CIA (Alan Dulles, et all...no One acts alone) did provide a modicum of Social Coherence. Add to this the Taft,/ Eisenhower pendulum swing back toward conservatism/consolidation after the war...and your/Hall is likely, at least partly, right.

But what else might "Hold The Center" stable per increasingly complexity? Russian experts argue today that the resurgence of Orthodox Christianity has done just This (Holding a Social Consensus/Center there the past 25 yrs) amid modern complexity (Z-Brzezinski partly predicted this). And evangelicals would likely argue Billy Graham revivalism greatly helped during the late 1940s---1965 in the USA.

But...the assassination of JFK & the subsequent Vietnam war (Beatles & Boomers??) began to crumble the "stability" of this Center conglomerate from the late 1960s forward.

What remains to be seen is What Might Hold The Center the 5-20 yrs...IFFF any ONE thing can? OR, are we left with Social Fragmentation and further seemingly chaotic Decentralization? And this is Not just in the West...but especially surging middle-class Desire(S) in the East (India, Japan, Indonesia, China) also the South (Brazil,/Argentina/Columbia et al Nigeria/Africa/Kenya etal).

This all bodes ill for Western Financial Power & Control -- More SADLY as fading powers are apt to do -- Provoke & Stir up more WARS (Russia/Israel/India/far East! to delay the inevitable???

And...have mercy on us "Deplorables" good Lord.

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