to isolate the senses and thus to hypnotize society. The 
formula for hypnosis is “one sense at a time.” And new 
technology possesses the power to hypnotize because it 
isolates the senses. Then, as Blake’s formula has it: “They 
became what they beheld.” Every new technology thus 
diminishes sense interplay and consciousness, precisely in the 
new area of novelty where a kind of identification of viewer and 
object occurs. This somnambulist conforming of beholder to 
the new form or structure renders those most deeply immersed 
in a revolution the least aware of its dynamic. What Polanyi 
observes about the insentience of those involved in the 
expediting of the new machine industry is typical of all the local 
and contemporary attitudes to revolution. It is felt, at those 
times, that the future will be a larger or greatly improved 
version of the immediate past . Just before revolutions the 
image of the immediate past is stark and firm, perhaps