There is an enormous redundancy in every well-written book. With a well-written book I only read the right-hand page and allow my mind to work on the left-hand page. With a poorly written book I read every word. The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression. Transmitted at the speed of light, all events on this planet are simultaneous. In the electric environment of information all events are simultaneous, there is no time or space separating events. We are all robots when uncritically involved with our technologies. We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns. |