The Perspective of Print

Abstract

Ever since film, television, computer graphics, and virtual reality have made pictures move at ever faster rates, media theories have exhibited puzzling outbursts of delight. Writing in general and books in particular are said to be obsolete, while the image, more powerful and unifying than ever, is poised to reclaim its old rights. I would like to challenge this enthusiasm and the diagnosis it is based on with the counterargument that the book is not simply at the end of its tether. Rather, it was a singular medium that had the power to facilitate its own technological supersession; and that particular power (and the source of much of Europe's political power) was not derived from its printed words alone, but from a technologically sophisticated media link that joined these words to printed images.

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