ABSTRACT
So wrote the out-of-work, in-exile revolutionary Leon Trotsky in 1912, killing time during the Balkan Wars as foreign correspondent for the Kievan Thought, seeking answers to the socalled “Eastern Question” of what next after the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire.1 History never repeats itself, yet with the information revolution it does seem at critical times to get caught in a feedback loop. Certainly the technical reproducibility of war, a.k.a. TV, has produced a kind of global swarming, where free electrons and voyeuristic viewers chase the queen bees of TV, “This is Christiane Amanpour reporting from yet another wartorn region of the world.” We have neither the promised new
world order, or hoped-for global village of interdependence, but the angry global hive of real-time TV. In this virtual community, the victims get stung while the viewers enjoy the buzz.
