How the Web Replaced Art as Bridge to Alternative Experience 

The feeling of global connectedness initially fostered by “broadcast communications technologies” was displaced by a feeling of isolation. As television programs and commercials came to dominate the collective sensory experience of the Advanced Nations, it became easier to pretend that nothing which came to us via Television was real. Art, in response, was overrun by Synthetics and Surrogates of all types, which, even from the greatest of artists producing at that time, did little more than stir a vague, introspective melancholy. Had this trend continued, we might today be living in a world pervaded by Selfish Apathy, instead of Xenophobic Paranoia.

But something happened in the early 1990’s that simply changed Everything. All of you know what I am talking about. So let’s just say that the desire to remotely access “tools” and “resources” ended up connecting all of Us to each other.

Able to ignore the hypnotic lure of Television for the first time since its introduction 40 years before, more and more of our time was given over to computer monitors. By way of the Web browser, the power of experiential self-determination came to millions of people who had never dreamt of such a thing. Suddenly, exploration and discovery could happen at any moment. Whatever the physical circumstances of the User...

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