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06542_Field_TCUM T107.txt
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1996-04-10
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907b
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16 lines
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”