Abstract

Spinoza conceived the concept of ‘Passions’ to talk about how an idea affects us: he talks of Sad Passions that reduce our abilities to act and of Joyful Passions that free us to act more fully. While Spinoza is explicitly talking of the gestalt of ideas acting on people his concept of Passions speaks to a problem we are all sadly too familiar with: overwhelming numbers of new broadcast and production technologies – vertical channels, virals, feeds, POD, Interactive TV, etc. – all vying for time, money and attention that none of us possess. In this paper I will be looking at a set of thought tools that may be used to examine production and broadcast technologies and be used to select those tools, in any particular circumstance, to decide which technologies which will add to the power and effectiveness of our communications and which, buy their very nature, will actively speak against us.