world.

     The principle of numbness comes into play with electric 
technology, as with any other. We have to numb our central 
nervous system when it is extended and exposed, or we will die. 
Thus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of 
the unconscious and of apathy. But it is strikingly the age of 
consciousness of the unconscious, in addition. With our central 
nervous system strategically numbed, the tasks of conscious 
awareness and order are transferred to the physical life of man, 
so that for the first time he has become aware of technology 
as an extension of his physical body. Apparently this could not 
have happened before the electric age gave us the means of 
instant, total field-awareness. With such awareness, the 
subliminal life, private and social, has been hoicked up into full 
view, with the result that we have “social consciousness”