Across The Communication Landscape Move The Specters

Electronic Aids, Particularly Domestic Computers, Will Help The Inner Migration, The Opting Out Of Reality. Reality Is No Longer Going To Be The Stuff Out There, But The Stuff Inside Your Head. It's Going To Be Commercial And Nasty At The Same Time.

In The Past We Have Always Assumed That The External World Around Us Has Represented Reality, However Confusing Or Uncertain, And That The Inner World Of Our Minds, Its Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions, Represented The Realm Of Fantasy, And The Imagination. These Roles, It Seems To Me, Have Been Reversed. The Most Prudent And Effective Method Of Dealing With The World Around Us Is To Assume That It Is A Complete Fiction - Conversely, The One Small Node Of Reality Left To Us Is Inside Of Our Own Heads.

It Seems To Me That What Most Of Us Have To Fear For The Future Is Not That Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, But Rather That Nothing Is Going To Happen... I Could Sum Up The Future In One Word, And That Word Is Boring. The Future Is Going To Be Boring.

The Car As We Know It Is On The Way Out. To A Large Extent, I Deplore Its Passing, For As A Basically Old-fashioned Machine, It Enshrines A Basically Old-fashioned Idea: Freedom. In Terms Of Pollution, Noise And Human Life, The Price Of That Freedom May Be High, But Perhaps The Car, By The Very Muddle And Confusion It Causes, May Be Holding Back The Remorseless Spread Of The Regimented, Electronic Society.

Sooner Or Later, Everything Turns Into Television.