Preaching, drama, cinema, television, museum, sports, and concerts all unite their audience in a collective ceremony. Conversely, solitary reading creates a distance from the receptive ritual's shared experience, so that the reader feels as if he or she were the only one receiving this medial transmission. The immanent silence in reading creates an imaginary space where language appears to soar above the immediate tumult of the mass media. The idea of order, which gives language its charm, is a medial effect that is abruptly disturbed when someone reads over your shoulder. Insight is as much the technological circuit's noise as it is an authentic source of information unique to primates.
Writing is no exception to the rule.
Media constitute a closed system which sends off sparks into the cosmic void every once in a while. Amidst the media landscape, we are never more than tourists who keep stubbornly looking for landmarks. Media writing ought to situate itself within the media network. Even those who believe they can place themselves outside it in some heroic gesture and deny the omnipotence of the media remain just one among many media figures. This puritanical, old-fashioned ambition, as surely as any other, will result in an end product to be included in the universal media archives.