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06581_Field_TCUM T146.txt
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1996-04-10
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injury as such, or to novel impact of any kind. Today we have
anaesthetics that enable us to perform the most frightful
physical operations on one another.
The new media and technologies by which we amplify and
extend ourselves constitute huge collective surgery carried out
on the social body with complete disregard for antiseptics. If
the operations are needed, the inevitability of infecting the
whole system during the operation has to be considered. For in
operating on society with a new technology, it is not the incised
area that is most affected. The area of impact and incision is
numb. It is the entire system that is changed. The effect of
radio is visual, the effect of the photo is auditory. Each new
impact shifts the ratios among all the senses. What we seek
today is either a means of controlling these shifts in the sense-
ratios of the psychic and social outlook, or a means of avoiding