I am excited. It's not often I come across innovative, creative insight. I see many books written by professional theorists, where the activity of writing and publishing is a form of literary entertainment, and the ideas therein are designed to be fashionable rather than penetrating.

Daniel Boorstin's book The Image was published in 1962. This is significant. I sometimes think the only way you can find original insight is to seek it in unusual and 'alternative' places. This is why I have studied subjects like, for example, Chinese and Indian philosophy, and Western systems like Tarot card symbolism. 1962 is effectively an 'alternative place'.

I heard about this book about a year ago, on Radio 4. A university lecturer was berating the news media for giving us stories about current soap opera stories. He described it as 'pseudo-events', and I thought what a penetrating concept that is, widely applicable to many aspects of contemporary society. I searched for "pseudo-events" in the wonderful Google. I did not expect to get any results, and was surprised and impressed when it led me to Boorstin's book.

The concept of the pseudo-event is central to Boorstin's analysis. It is a "synthetic novelty" (p 21) where, for example, "the Grand Canyon itself (is) a disappointing reproduction of the Kodachrome original" (p 25). Big Brother is a pertinent, current example: "In many subtle ways, the rise of pseudo-events has mixed up our roles as actors and as audience - or, the philosophers would say, as 'object' and as 'subject'. Now we can oscillate between the two roles" (p 40).

The pseudo-event is essentially a vacuous, meaningless occasion that has a false cultural significance, generated through the media. 'Celebrity culture' is a substantial part of it:

Our age has produced a new kind of eminence. This is as characteristic of our culture as was the divinity of Greek gods in the sixth century B.C. or the chivalry of knights and lovers in the middle ages. It has not yet driven heroism, sainthood or martyrdom completely out of our consciousness. But with every decade it overshadows them more. All older forms of greatness now survive only in the shadow of this new form. This new kind of eminence is 'celebrity' (p 66).

Celebrities are famous for being famous. Their distinction is closely related to their image, rather than their achievement; they are "human pseudo-events" (p 75).

The pseudo-event "derives interest from the process of making it…fans enjoy watching the process of celebrity-making. The same is true of works of art" (p 174). Thus, we have the enormously popular Big Brother, the recent programmes documenting aspirant pop stars and - less obviously perhaps - people like Tracy Emin, Sarah Lucas and Damian Hirst. Ultimately, these people do not say anything that has not been said before and, like their predecessor Andy Warhol, they manipulate the public to enhance and elevate their status through notoriety. They are esteemed for their celebrity value, which Boorstin calls a pseudo-event. Viewed in this way, it is not something to get excited about but, rather, that it points to what Christopher Norris in Uncritical Theory calls a "cultural malaise".

The pseudo-event has four main characteristics:

1) It is not spontaneous, but planned in advance - like a press conference.

2) It is produced in order to be reported - like the press release.

3) Its relation to an underlying concept of reality is unclear - motivations and the psychological context are more important than actual events.

4) It is self fulfulling and tautological - the fact that it is presented as important creates its own importance.

I am beginning to think that the cultural history of America over the last 50 years or so is very important. Boorstin documents the growing trend of the pseudo-event, over that period of time in the US. It's where it began, and it has since spread to the UK.

Boorstin also refers to Edward Bernays and his 1923 book Crystallising Public Opinion. The BBC did a superb series recently called The Century of the Self, where one or two programmes examined the influence of Bernays, and how he manipulated mass consciousness using the psychology of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

Bernays realised that the techniques of war propaganda could be applied to other areas of social and cultural life. He realised the term 'propaganda' was unacceptable, so he changed it to 'public relations'. Before Freud and Bernays, consumer society, celebrity society and political 'spin' did not exist.

Corporate advertising, religion, politicians and the art/music/movie industry deliberately appeal to the irrational and instinctual part of the human mind. On one of the BBC programmes, they stated that political writer Walter Lipman said society needed an elite that could control what he called "the bewildered herd", based on psychological science. Bernays called this "the engineering of consent", where you appeal to inner desires and longings, and use it for your own purpose.

If you link products, narratives and personalities to emotional desires and feelings, they become powerful emotional symbols. Consumerism and religion rely on this; Joseph Goebells used the same methods to help the plans of his Fuhrer.

If you appeal to the imagination rather than rational thinking, you gain power. Napoleon knew this, and once said that 'imagination rules the world'.