Study in Roman-Maccabaean relations

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The original bailout of US corporations : the public relations bailout

More than a trillion of taxpayer dollars are currently being used to bail out the US banking, mortgage and car industries. This invokes an interesting connection to public relations the last time drastic US government involvement with corporations was contemplated. This pre-First World War crisis of the free enterprise system involved a deficit not of money but of favourable public opinion. The requirement was for vast amounts of public opinion and public policy work by a reported at least 1200 – what were at that time called – press agents. This was the period when public relations emerged as a fundamental plank of US and ultimately of global culture. The thesis of this article is that many aspects of the world we live in cannot be properly understood without a better analysis of the first bailout of US corporations—the public relations bailout.

Sophistic 3.0 and the end of media relations

This paper looks at Web 2.0 as a new form of discursive art which may be changing human subjectivity - which may be producing new kinds of people. It casts the Web 2.0 era as the 'Third Sophistic' in comparison to the two other sophistics: (1) the period from the Ancient Greek Enlightenment when grammar, rhetoric and dialectic were invented by the original pre-Socratic sophists up until the times of Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates; and (2) the Second Sophistic in the early centuries of the Common Era when 'epideictic,' that is subtle, artistic rhetoric was perfected. These sophistics marked alterations in the possibilities for human cultural expression and conception. Are we experiencing a 'Sophistic 3.0'? If so what are the likely consequences for contemporary discourse and its media?