Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Hans Magnus Enzensberger did not view universal access to the Internet or web sharing as a liberation of capitalist media. He would have supported an idea of citizens recording events such as the Rodney King incident or the World Trade Organization protests because documentation would be made in the citizen’s interest, rather than in the interests of repressive government.

Enzensberger discussed the concept of the “consciousness industry� in “Constituents of a Theory of the Media.� He stated that electronic media have shaped our consciousness socio-economically in the post-industrial age.

In this age, the largest branch of industry will be the office of censorship. Political control of equipment will be where maximum profits of the manufacturer can be made. Enzensberger discusses the resentment of the “bourgeois intelligentsia� against the new industry. The intelligentsia wishes to defend themselves from “mass culture� and “depersonalization� but should readily abandon the idea of clinging to ownership of personal property. New media cannot be hoarded or kept eternally.