ABSTRACT
The Australian journalist and social critic, Phillip Adams, recently wrote an article on Clive Wearing, the subject of a British television documentary called Prisoner of Consciousness. Wearing suffered from a condition brought about by the 'herpes simplex' virus which destroyed a large section of his brain. As a result, he suffered loss of long-term memory, and apart from a miscellany of competencies, could not retain information for more than a few minutes. Inspired by the documentary, Adams drew an analogy between Wearing's condition and the state of consciousness in society at large in an age of mass media.
