From The New Media Invasion
Introduction to a Catastrophic Bifurcation
by John David Ebert
When Worlds Close Down
Every culture opens a window onto a particular world horizon that is accessed via one or another form of media. Normally, the process of articulation and unfolding of a cosmos is two-fold, that of annunciation and transmission: annunciation, that is, of a vision to one sort of prophet, while another one, receiving the vision, then creates the necessary medium for transmitting it on a mass scale. Thus, Abraham, living in the Mesopotamian city of Ur, hears the voice of an obscure and hitherto unknown god that tells him to leave the land of his birth and migrate to another land, Canaan, which this god will make known to him. Generations later, after enduring the collective traumas of Egyptian servitude, the vision descends to Moses, who invents the medium of the alphabet and brings it down from the top of the mountain as the new means for communicating the Hebraic vision of a non-visual deity who makes his will known via a non-pictographic script. Read the rest of this entry »
posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments