Lvov (Ukraine), 1978.

Have I said it before? I am learning to see. Yes I am beginning. It’s still going badly. But I intend to make the most of my time. Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Three years ago Dr. Lusig Danielian came to our university to deliver a sequence of lectures on politics, democracy, and modern mass media. Unfortunately, I could not attend her lectures but I met her at the IREX office and we talked for an hour. She told me about her uncle.

In the late seventies, the story goes, the old man went to the United States to visit his relatives. Yet from the airport everything was amazing for him, everything was new and different. He was like a child: stopping every now and then, asking questions. And when they came home, he went straight towards the TV set.

Then it happened.

Day by day he was sitting there, silently watching television. He was reluctant even to go see the places. It seemed that for him all the universe was confined in the Zenith’s screen. Later when he started again with his questions, they figured out that he could not distinguish between the programs he was watching. He did not notice when a film was ended and an ad spot was going on. He was asking, for instance, where did the woman go, I haven’t seen her since last Sunday, and then, who is that guy, what is he doing here?..

This could be merely funny, but they saw how essential for the old man was the process of his self-determination, how poignant was his subjection to the information outfall.