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06590_Field_TCUM T155.txt
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1996-04-10
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of a popular form of entertainment functioning as mimic model
of the real thing.
Perhaps the most obvious “closure” or psychic
consequence of any new technology is just the demand for it.
Nobody wants a motorcar till there are motorcars, and nobody
is interested in TV until there are TV programs. This power of
technology to create its own world of demand is not
independent of technology being first an extension of our own
bodies and senses. When we are deprived of our sense of sight,
the other senses take up the role of sight in some degree. But
the need to use the senses that are available is as insistent as
breathing—a fact that makes sense of the urge to keep radio
and TV going more or less continuously. The urge to
continuous use is quite independent of the “content” of public
programs or of the private sense life, being testimony to the