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k.i.s.s. (Keep It Simple Stupid) of the panopticon is a cultural theory and media literacy Web site run by Dougie Bicket.
Beyond a simple rehashing of the big ideas out there, it is my modest (and populist) aim to make all the stuff that's normally wrapped up in what we call "cultural theory" both straightforward and intelligible -- hence the subtitle 'k.i.s.s.' ("Keep It Simple Stupid") -- as well as applicable to those of you asking yourself "What does it all mean?". This is kind of important if this field is not to be strangled by impenetrable prose and dense, elitist drivel.
The idea of k.i.s.s. of the panopticon is to give people a quick, user-friendly, one-stop shopping guide to things like cultural/critical theory and its relationship with communications and new media, including the Internet. It might also help to get people thinking and maybe, just mebbe, provide a fresh perspective on how this stuff really affects our lives.
One of the cool things you might realize from this site (if you hadn't already done so) is that cultural studies is actually getting easier to deal with as our Internet-driven technological environment catches up with all that weird postmodern intellectual stuff that sounded just plain crazy a few years ago. Baudrillard's ideas on simulation and simulacra, just to grab one example, suddenly seem a little more real and a lot clearer within the computer-mediated realm of hypertext and hyperlinks -- not to mention the Hollywood treatment doled out by The Matrix and its sequels. At the same time, we need to understand the older paradigms of mass media and society (Marx and all that lot) before we can really get a grip on the "new" stuff. --Dougie Bicket, http://www.geneseo.edu/~bicket/panop/home.htm [ aug 2003 ]
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