program a process or a product in order for it to be 
accomplished. Is it not rather like the case of Al Capp’s 
Schmoos? One had only to look at a Schmoo and think 
longingly of pork chops or caviar, and the Schmoo ecstatically 
transformed itself into the object of desire. Automation brings 
us into the world of the Schmoo. The custom-built supplants 
the mass-produced.

     Let us, as the Chinese say, move our chairs closer to the 
fire and see what we are saying. The electric changes 
associated with automation have nothing to do with ideologies 
or social programs. If they had, they could be delayed or 
controlled. Instead, the technological extension of our central 
nervous system that we call the electric media began more 
than a century ago, subliminally. Subliminal have been the 
effects. Subliminal they remain. At no period in human culture