Nexus - 0601 - New Times Magazine-pages

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REVIEWS its pervasiveness in our lives is hard to B oO oO K RY escape. And in case it's escaped our notice, Jeffrey Robinson reminds us in his new posedly telling the story of the aliens’ book, The Manipulators, that we, the target- demise. (See NEXUS 3/01, 2/28.) ed consumers, are a party to our own com- Hausdorf retraces the steps of various mercial seduction. En masse, we participate Western explorers to China, Tibet and in the manipulation of our emotions and Mongolia, in search of the mythical 1,000- fears, whether we buy into the 'sell' or not. foot-high White Pyramid, the elusive We can try to reduce our exposure to adver- Shambhala and the ominous Monastery of tising's string-pulling, but this is fraught the Black Khan. He also speculates on the with logistical difficulties. influence of Alien Mind in Japan and the With reference to selected case studies in underwater city ruins off the Ryuku Islands. __ the history of modern advertising, marketing His coverage of modern UFO sightings in and retailing, Robinson exposes the tech- China is slighter than expected, and he falls niques that are constantly being refined to back on already well-documented UFO capture the public's imagination and dollar. encounters for comparison. It's a shame Even neurolinguistic programming has been there are no photographs in this edition, but —_ applied in the pursuit of profit. While the Hausdorf's book remains a fascinating read. arguments damning the subterfuge of mass- market selling are not new, they have quite TLIC AAAANDIN ATADC. A Ransnivna THE MANIPULATORS: A Conspiracy to Make Us Buy by Jeffrey Robinson Publisher: Simon & Schuster, UK, 1998 ISBN: 0-684-81767-5 (310pp hc) Price: AUD$34.95; NZD$45.00; £17.99; NLG 70,90 Available: Aust—Simon & Schuster, tel (02) 9415 9924; NZ—Macmillan, tel (09) 415 6677; UK—Simon & Schuster, tel 0171 316 1900; Europe—NEXUS office t's more than 40 years since Vance Packard uncovered the insidious machina- tions of advertising in his book, The Hidden Persuaders, and in that time the techniques have only become more sophisticated, incor- porating all sorts of 'breakthroughs' from the behavioural sciences. So, while advertising serves its purpose in making people aware of products and ser- vices they would otherwise not know about, NANPOLATIRS couspiRacy 10 MAKE US BUY JEFFREY ROBINSON 72 * NEXUS an impact, stacked up as they are here. This book will be appreciated by those who have a healthy, cynical attitude towards mass-market manipulation, and probably by those industry types who wish to fine-tune their techniques of mass distraction. ALTERED GENES—Reconstructing Nature: The Debate edited by Richard Hindmarsh, Geoffrey Lawrence & Janet Norton Publisher: Allen & Unwin, Australia, '98 ISBN: 1-86448-795-X (235pp tpb) Price: AUD$24.95; NZD$35.00; £12.99 (avail. May '99); USD$n/a Available: Aust—Allen & Unwin, tel (02) 8425 0100; NZ—Archetype Book Agents, tel (09) 377 3800; UK—Allen & Unwin, tel 0171 7040033; USA—Allen & Unwin he multibillion-dollar global biotechnol- ogy industry continues to expand its reach into myriad facets of our lives, so it's in our interests to be armed with information on its impact and become politically and socially active if we're at all concerned about where it's all heading. As the well-known environmentalist and geneticist David Suzuki says in his reflec- tive, sobering introduction to Altered Genes, the truth is that the geneticists and biotech- nologists are unable to predict with certainty all the possible deleterious consequences of their experiments with life. In order to promote informed public debate, the three editors have compiled a selection of papers (including their own) from mostly Australian and New Zealand contributors who are well-respected in their fields of biology, bioethics, consumer research, food science, genetics, human DECEMBER 1998 - JANUARY 1999