One of my colleague gifted me a small book, G. Ritzer’s “The McDonaldization of Society” published in 1993. Such a well-known book, I saw numerous citations of this book but never had a chance to read it.

As a commtech scholar, it is refreshing to read about modern artifacts reflected by Weber’s rationality and bureaucracy especially in this so-called post-Fordism era.  We talk so much about the difference of contemporary lifestyle along with new technologies, notably the Internet, and the life is changing definitely thanks to those tools. However, reading this book, I feel that much of the discussions in this book remains just solid today. The negative consequences of the rationality thus dominates our mundane life as well. Even more, our seeming revolutionary technologies often reinforce the irrationalities of rationalization.

At the same time, I read newspapers today talking about twitter’s power in the process of protest against Iranian election. Then, this time, twitter seems to be against the rationalized appratus….

Hum… the question whether the new techs are changing or subordinated to the system may be just unanswerable.

Anyway, here’s a short exerpt that I liked from Ritzer’s book: 

“There are innumerable examples of the rationalization of recreational escape routes. The best is the rationalization of today’s vacation. Typically, a vacation involves an effort to flee the rationalized routines of our work lives. For those Americans who wish to escape to less rationalized European society, there is the package tour that rationalizes the process. People can efficiently see, in a rigidly controlled manner, many sights while traveling in conveyances, stying in hotels, and eating in fast-food restaurants that are predictably like those they are accustomed to at home. For those who wish to escape to the Caribbean, there are resorts such as Club Med that offer a large number of routinized activities and where one can stay in predictable settings without ever venturing out into the unpredictability of native life on a Caribbean island. For whose who wish to fell back to nature within the United States, there are rationalized campgrounds where one can have little or no contact with the unpredictabilities of nature. One can even remain within one’s camper and “enjoy” all of the rationalized forms of recreation available at home – TV, VCR, Nintendo, CD player…”(p. 23)