than it is obliterated by another, just as our Western lives seem 
to native cultures to be one long series of preparations for  
living . But the favorite stance of literary man has long been “to 
view with alarm” or “to point with pride,” while scrupulously 
ignoring what’s going on.

     One immense area of photographic influence that affects 
our lives is the world of packaging and display and, in general, 
the organization of shops and stores of every kind. The 
newspaper that could advertise every sort of product on one 
page quickly gave rise to department stores that provided 
every kind of product under one roof. Today the decentralizing 
of such institutions into a multiplicity of small shops in 
shopping plazas is partly the creation of the car, partly the 
result of TV. But the photograph still exerts some centralist 
pressure in the mail-order catalogue. Yet the mail-order houses