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By Root 1379 0

it feels better than Stalin’s or Deng’s or Honnecker’s—but it may be as depressingly uniform in its formula hits as Socialist Realism was in its heroic monuments. The common currency of sex and violence may be minted by an uncoerced (if arduously manipulated) private market, but it depreciates as quickly as greenbacks minted by a state that has gone off the gold standard. Under Soviet communism, dissident poetry could be published only surreptitiously and read only in private. Under Russian capitalism, dissident poetry isn’t published at all, in part because there is nothing obvious to dissent from, but mainly because poetry doesn’t make a profit and cannot compete with Stephen King. French policy scientist Dominique Moisi’s lament about France applies around the world: “There is less and less of France abroad, and more that is foreign in France.”33

As television and computer information takes to the telephone wires, which in turn either become fiber optic or get tied in to the new “switched” networking capabilities that let old-fashioned phone wires carry much heavier two-way traffic, software producers will have ever greater access to the world’s population.34 From their point of view, the goal is an instantaneous, interactive, holographic, enhanced sound/real picture virtual network in which every human on earth can be accessed by every other human being and everyone is linked to every company with something to tell or to sell, whether a durable good, a service, some species of information or entertainment, or an explicit political message—albeit in McWorld’s videology entertainment is the political message. Will this increase real choice? Multiplying the access routes and diversifying the delivery systems will not necessarily increase product pluralism or program diversity. It could mean a thousand different new ways to promote and sell just one universal product—Coke, the Simpsons (either ones, the Barts or the O.J.s—you choose), Michael Jackson, or a candidate for political office.

The distance between Paramount Pictures and the Home Shopping Network was shrinking long before QVC tried in vain to acquire Paramount or the Internet offered computer shopping services. Five hundred channels will not necessarily make viewers feel freer than fifty or even five, and in any case, with the same old handful of cultural providers offering the programming, there will not necessarily be greater variety: only a different and far more effective monopoly and a radical segmentation of what will remain the same old markets: American pop culture instead of Indonesian pop culture; a global political policy forged by markets rather than French state policy forged by technocrats; an unofficial MTV aesthetic rather than an official Hindi cultural line. And such differences as are built into special “narrowcast” programming of the kind the multiplication of channels will facilitate are likely only to divide viewers into horizontally segmented consumer markets—a sportsman’s channel and a couch potato’s channel, a Latino mutual fund holders’ channel and a Jewish gold standard channel, a gay Republicans’ channel and a Democratic smokers’ channel.

Choosers are made, not born. For free markets to offer real choice, consumers must be educated choosers and programming must proffer real variety rather than just shopping alternatives. Much of McWorld’s strategy for creating global markets depends on a systematic rejection of any genuine consumer autonomy or any costly program variety—deftly coupled, however, with the appearance of infinite variety. Selling depends on fixed tastes (tastes fixed by sellers) and focused desires (desires focused by merchandisers). Cola companies, we have seen, can no more afford to encourage the drinking of tea in Indonesia than Fox Television can encourage people to spend evenings at the library reading books they borrow rather than buy; and Paramount, even though it owns Simon & Schuster, cannot really afford to have people read books at all unless they are reading novelizations of Paramount movies. By the same logic,