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Popular Culture Review
“must see before one dies.” And the new information technologies did not
simply allow us to be reached by the office in the unlikely event of an
emergency—it bound us to the office, and to everyone else, for twenty-four
hours a day.
Martin Heidegger tells us that a bridge does not simply link two sides
of a river; it actually changes our comportment to the world around it, as it
defines a space on the far side of the bank that is a space for us, reorganizing our
sense of locatedness in the world and the possibilities afforded to us.5 Elsewhere
Heidegger says that technology is not simply things that we use, but rather a
pervasive mode of being in the world, and specifically an acquisitive mode—we
ask the world to give up its energy to us, so we can store and use that energy—
that hides other possible modes of being in the world.6 Others have seen a
certain truth in these suggestions and have elaborated on them. Don Ihde, for
one, has traced how new technologies redefine our bodies, and has given some
thought to how the new communication technologies extend our bodies in space
and dissolve them with virtual representations.7 Marxist theorists have been
especially sensitive to material conditions and their psychological influence, and
Balibar and Macherey have struggled with the degree to which our material and
social conditions shape our attitudes and tastes—seemingly so “personal.”8 This
is a particularly important topic in an age where your iPod playlist may be a
defining feature of your self-representation to others.
Being and Writing
Postman views the advent of the “electronic age,” dominated by the
visual medium of television, as the proximate cause of the erosion of an
intellectual culture founded on the primacy of the written word.9 He notes that in
Peoria on October 16, 1854, Lincoln and Douglas met for one of their famous
debates and carried on for seven hours. Douglas delivered a three-hour opening
address to a rapt audience. Lincoln was to respond, and, noting that it was
already 5pm, and expecting to speak at least as long, offered that the audience
go home, eat dinner, and return. Apparently they did return. Lincoln spoke for
several more hours, and Douglas was allowed a lengthy rebuttal. The style and
the content of the speeches suggest that this was an intellectually challenging
seven hours for the audience:
Not only did Lincoln and Douglas write all their speeches in
advance, but they also planned their rebuttals in writing. Even
the spontaneous interactions between the speakers were
expressed in a sentence structure, sentence length and
rhetorical organization which took their form from writing.
...The resonance of typography was ever-present. Here was
argument and counterargument, claim and counterclaim,
criticism of relevant texts, the most careful scrutiny of the
previously uttered sentences of one’s opponent.10