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09117_Field_TCGG T882.txt
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1996-04-10
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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