S C R E E N C U L T U R E
   S    C    R    E    E    N        C    U    L    T    U    R    E

I started to think about the screen as a repository of dim images, half forgotten memories, a reflecting skin broken down into little bits so that the closer it is inspected, the further it is removed from any recognizable image. There's really nothing there, yet there's a fascination, in the way that it glows and hold your attention, ultimately commanding a position of respect and authority in the worlds of politics, art, business, warfare . . .

               "Although technology exerted a fascination for fascist intellectuals                 all over Europe, it was only in Germany that it became part of the                 national identity.
" (9) "German anticapitalism was anti-Semitic                 but not anti-technological.
" (10)
Jeffrey Hert, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich , (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984),

              "It is true that technology allowed for this illusion of the divine omnipotence, and especially the presence of the Führer:                 from the automobile to the aeroplane, from the infinitely repro-               ducible effigy to radiophonic transmission, technology could                give that feeling of immediacy known in the fulguration of the                magic act which could dissolve the sensible barriers of space                and time.
" (1029)

Eric Michaud, "Nazisme et représentation," in Critique: Revue générale des publications française et étrangères 43 , no. 487 [December 1987];trans. Peter T. Connor,


Both quoted in:
  Author:           Ronell, Avital.
 Title:               The telephone book : technology--schizophrenia--electric speech Published:       Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, c1989.
 Description:     465 p.
 : ill.

Sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder what they might have done with computers and the Internet! Endless frightful possiblilites for the lists, archives, databases, cross references between areas of research, confiscations, appropriations, and so on . . .