The first of the 2010 season of the ever-popular IQ2 debates took the crowd-pleasing topic: "Popular Culture: We've seen the future, and it's junk." Some big-name thinkers and writers lined up to do battle.
Is popular culture an annoyance that keeps the masses in a state of stupor? Or does it shape our society in an important and entertaining way?
Bio
Bryce Courtenay
Bryce Courtenay is the author of nineteen novels, the commercial success of which has earned him the position of Australia's top-selling novelist.
His background is in advertising.
Tom Crago
Tom Crago is the CEO of video game development company Tantulus Media, and president of the Game Developer's Association of Australia.
He is a former lawyer and athlete, having held the NSW championship in triple-jump.
Peter Craven
Peter Craven is a leading literary critic, journalist and editor. He is co-founder of the literary magazine Scripsi, which ran from 1981 to 1994. Craven has written about literature for numerous newspapers, including a column in The Australian for most of the 1990s.
Elizabeth Farrelly
Elizabeth Farrelly is a former architect who writes a column for The Sydney Morning Herald, generally focusing on urban affairs. She has been the recipient of writing awards including the Paris-based CICA award for architectural criticism, the Adrian Ashton Award, the Marion Mahoney Award and the Pascall Prize for criticism.
Among her books are Three Houses and Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness, which was longlisted a 2008 Walkley Award for Nonfiction.
Wendy Harmer
Wendy Harmer is one of Australia's best known humorists.
She is a veteran of the Edinburgh, Montreal and Glasgow-Mayfest Festivals and has worked extensively in London, America and Ireland, appearing at the Edinburgh Festival five times. In 1990, her one-woman show "LOVE GONE WRONG" received a "Pick Of The Fringe" award and subsequently transferred to London.
Simon Longstaff
Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre. Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York.
Stephen Sewell
Stephen Sewell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, whose works include "The Boys," "The Secret Death of Salvador Dali" and "Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America - A Drama in 30 Scenes."
Any music intended to be received and appreciated by ordinary people in a literate, technologically advanced society dominated by urban culture. Unlike traditional folk music, popular music is written by known individuals, usually professionals, and does not evolve through the process of oral transmission. Historically, popular music was any non-folk form that acquired mass popularity—from the songs of the medieval minstrels and troubadours to those elements of fine art music originally intended for a small, elite audience but that became widely popular. After the Industrial Revolution, true folk music began to disappear, and the popular music of the Victorian era and the early 20th century was that of the music hall and vaudeville, with its upper reaches dominated by waltz music and operettas. In the U.S., minstrel shows performed the compositions of songwriters such as Stephen Foster. In the 1890s Tin Pan Alley emerged as the first popular song-publishing industry, and over the next half century its lyricism was combined with European operetta in a new kind of play known as the musical. Beginning with ragtime in the 1890s, African Americans had begun combining complex African rhythms with European harmonic structures, a synthesis that would eventually create jazz. The music audience greatly expanded, partly because of technology. By 1930, phonograph records had replaced sheet music as the chief source of music in the home. The microphone enabled more intimate vocal techniques to be commercially adapted. The ability of radio broadcasting to reach rural communities aided the dissemination of new styles, notably country music. U.S. popular music achieved international dominance in the decades after World War II. By the 1950s, the migration of African Americans to cities in the North had resulted in the cross-fertilization of elements of blues with the uptempo rhythms of jazz to create rhythm and blues. Rock and roll, with figures such as Elvis Presley, soon developed as an amalgam of rhythm and blues with country music and other influences (seerock music). In the 1960s, British rock groups, including the Beatles, became internationally influential. Rock quickly attracted the allegiance of Western teenagers, who replaced young adults as the chief audience for popular music. From the late 1960s black pop (seeMotown) achieved greater sophistication and a wide audience. The history of pop through the 1990s was basically that of rock and its variants, including disco, heavy metal, punk rock, and rap, which spread throughout the world and became the standard musical idiom for young people in many countries.
Finally it gets down to brain development or lack of development. Unlike other Mammals, Human brain is developed by the environment and since technology is doubling itīs knowledge every year, human biological brain-mind, doubles information 5-7 years, therefore Pop culture changes so fast that there is little time for observation, youth if they lead the way, you might not get time to respond let alone think about it. Manīs brain was not made to handle surprises constantly, and yet it making adjustments to speed, volume and Global influences and results all happen at once. The addiction to technology like all Human addiction is a shaping force not a driving force, therefore Pop culture gone global may seem as a horrible copy cat attitude , follow the stars, however twinkle twinkle little star is still wondering where they are, this is ADD gone global, like nutrition, memory only for the now and therefore the future will always seem confusing and always a surprise. My philosophy says that walking into the unknown, does not mean you have to be a victim. So relax pop culture says lighten up serious is too slow, in past the saying was when your smiling well you the rest, pop culture makes people smile feel good even if it has no other value. Thank you nice debate
Great debate! I think the hole in the pro-boat ended up being that while pop-culture is, as one speaker put it, not culture at all but commerce it seems evident that the internet is taking this commerce (at least the oppressive side of it) out of the culture, and this can only be a good thing.
member. 
