GEAB 115

Since the Second World War, the moral domination of the West over the rest of the world has been largely based on the undeniable quality of its media, guarantors of representative information of world realities and public debates concerning them. This is not to idealise a system of course far from perfect, but to remember that it was nevertheless the best available on a global scale in the last few decades. It is on this open information system that the “free (and much simpler) world” has supported its democratic mechanisms in a satisfactory manner.

Evolution of the world vs. stagnation of information systems

We do not intend to describe the collapse of this information system as a result of a long and multifactorial process. Let us simply say that it started with the fall of the Soviet bloc inaugurating several of the following trends:

. A feeling of invincibility on the part of the Western camp, which was not conducive to vigilance;

. The opening up of the world to new civilizational influences hitherto circumscribed behind the walls of the Cold War or included in a Western acculturation camp;

. Societies suddenly shifting into an all-economic universe because of the “end of History”

. To this we must of course add the effects of the process of globalisation, initiated in the wake of the collapse of communism, of the deployment of processes of “European style” regional integration and soon of Internet connection.

All this results in a complex, open and multi-connected world, brewing a new dimension of information relevant to all of us, around a West more occupied in counting than observing.